FRED BINLEY | GRADUATED: 2003 DEGREE | MUSIC PROFESSION | HEAD OF UK STUDENT RECRUITMENT, LANCASTER UNIVERSITY COLLEGE | CARTMEL


Hitting the Right Note


Fred Binley’s relationship with his work as Head of UK Student Recruitment at Lancaster could be compared with one of the pieces of music he performs in his parallel career as a freelance jazz pianist. There’s a level of familiarity, an underlying rhythm, some recurring themes but plenty of room for improvisation.


He loves it. Working in a team of 16 colleagues, in what he calls “a very competitive market place” his approach is clearly working. At a time when most UK universities are on a recruitment low, Lancaster is, according to the latest figures, seeing an 14% increase in UK undergraduate applicants, compared with a national average increase of only 0.2%.


Part of his success may be that, in his words ‘Lancaster gets into your blood’. In the past 20 years he has graduated from Lancaster, worked there, left it to work at two other universities and has recently returned with a sense of coming home.


It’s not what he had planned when he applied to Lancaster. Brought up in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Fred wanted to be a music teacher and was already an accomplished violinist and pianist.


Lancaster at that time had a highly regarded Music Department headed by Haydn expert Professor Denis McCaldin with Professor Roger Bray.


“What made it so wonderful studying music at Lancaster was the sheer amount of music-making there was on campus,” he enthuses. He played in the University Symphony and the Chamber Orchestras, as well as the many ensembles that came his way.


In his first week he joined both the music and theatre societies and performed in the ULMS Freshers’ concert. He went on to join the Big Band run by his wife-to-be Rachel. They met in a book queue at Waterstones on campus in his second year.


In the Music Department he liked and admired Professors McCaldin and Bray for their academic rigour, their warmth and friendliness.


He also slipped into life in the north of England so seamlessly, that he is unsurprised by his return to Lancaster in 2023 after around a decade at Southampton (Schools and Colleges Liaison Officer) and Bangor Universities (UK Regional Recruitment Officer).


He still buzzes as he talks about the breadth of academic opportunities open to him, from pre-classical music to 21st century serial music. Fred loved his studying and quickly felt at ease studying old notations as part of Early Music. He also remembers enthusiasm for Mozart operas and early 20th-century French music by the group calling themselves ‘Les Six’.


At Lancaster, he developed his love of jazz and is proud to remember his final year recital featuring his jazz trio, with him on piano, and two friends on double bass and drum.


18 | STEPS 2024


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