Laura is a 25-year-old musicianship teacher and classical singer from Northern Ireland, and has recently accepted a place on the MMus Vocal Performance and Kodály Musicianship course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. She has also recently taken on the role of musicianship lecturer at the Junior Conservatoire of Scotland. Her plan for the future is to go back to Northern Ireland and teach musicianship in areas of deprivation, especially in the rural parts of Northern Ireland, as well as develop creative hubs and spaces for people living with dementia and special educational needs to come together and experience the life-changing power of music.

I don’t really know where to begin… The BKA Summer School was one of the highlights of my professional training to date. It is almost surreal now to think that I was fortunate enough to not only experience the highest level of musicianship training from the world’s most incredible Kodály experts, but also to be selected as one of the recipients of the CVMS award, which in all honesty, made this experience possible for me.

Bringing theory alive
During the course I attended a range of different musicianship classes during the day, and every evening I took part in the extra activities which included Morris dancing, Elgar part songs and of course, the Irish céilí. As invaluable and worthwhile as every single class was for my personal development on the course, I want to give a particular mention to a few of my own personal highlights. Firstly, to my amazing musicianship tutor, Esther Hargittai. Somehow, she managed to turn all the mathematical information that lay dead in my brain from those previous, scary ABRSM ‘theory’ exams about figured bass, chordal progression and modal harmony, into solfa magic! Already, I have started embedding these new ways of thinking with my new class of 10 – to 16-year-old musicianship students, who, after just one month of teaching, have already told me how much easier and FUN their musicianship class is… Magic!