Music

You will experience a wide variety of learning activities in Music and they will contribute to the development of your graduate attributes.

Teaching and learning will normally take place in a variety of continually evolving contexts, including an appropriate balance of the following kinds of activity:

a) Workshops, rehearsals, productions, practical classes, laboratory or studio-based practice, screenings, lectures, discussions (both online and in class), seminars, and tutorials. You will be encouraged to apply your knowledge and understanding of critical theory to case studies within regional, national and international contexts;

b) Group and individual learning;

c) Professional placements of varying types (which will be of especial relevance in enhancing your employability and ability to be enterprising);

d) Tutor-led, (peer-group) student-led, and self-directed study;

e) Use of subject-specific and generic technologies (these will be particularly helpful in the development of your digital literacy);

f) Resource-based learning, including library work and attendance at performances

Who will teach you on this course?

Anne-Marie Beaumont is the Course Leader for the BMus Music. She has over 20 years of teaching experience in H.E., and, in recognition of this, has been awarded a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Authority. She has presented her research on pedagogy in Irish music, early music and poetry, and seventeenth-century liturgical composition at international conferences in Europe, South-East Asia and the US.

With a lifelong passion for Early Music and Traditional Irish music, fostered by Prof. Mícheál O’Súilleabháin and Mel Mercier in UCC, she has conducted choirs, chamber ensembles and is the current musical director of the Hub Ceílí Band. As a practitioner/conductor Anne-Marie has performed in Ireland, the UK, the US and with her student chamber choir, Réaltanna, was invited to perform at the “Twin Towers” of KLCC in Malaysia in 2006.

As a composer for the stage, in collaboration with the playwright Peter Cann, Anne-Marie has been commissioned to write original soundscapes for productions including The Happy Prince (2016), Frankenstein by Nick Dear (2016), Play the Man (2015), andThe Black Country Mystery Plays (2011).

Anne-Marie is an active researcher and is currently engaged in “The Lichfield Part-Books’ Auralisation Project” which launched at Lichfield Cathedral in July 2017. With research partner Dr Aglaia Foteinou, this interdisciplinary project will bring to light some of the forgotten music of the seventeenth-century and the post-Restoration period.

Kevin Stannard has performed as a pianist, organist and conductor across the UK for over thirty years and more recently his interests in music education have taken him to conferences in Malaysia, China and ustralia.

He began directing choirs in 1980 and has worked with all ages including massed choirs of school children at the Wembley Conference Centre; adult choirs such as the North Cotswold Chamber Choir and close harmony group Two-Apart which he founded in 1987; student choirs such as the Oxford Gargoyles and the Howlin’ Wolves (University of Wolverhampton Chamber Choir) who won the regional heat of the Sainsbury’s Choir of the Year competition in 2002.

Kevin has taken student choirs to perform in a number of cathedrals in the UK and on tour in Amsterdam. In 2008 he secured £25k funding to enable the Sneyd School Choir to go to Graz, Austria, for the World Choir Olympics involving two former University of Wolverhampton music students on the teaching staff. Kevin’s work with children’s singing is widely recognised and his music is published by Oxford University Press, Faber and the ABRSM.

Other work of note includes being Musical Director for CoMA East Midlands, Contemporary Music-Making for Amateurs, (1999-2002) producing a concert of songs by Pixell & Gunn at the Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton (2004) and Kevin’s debut as organ soloist at Symphony Hall (2006).

Steve Cooper is a renowned music educator and is currently Course Leader for Popular Music where he specialises in teaching guitar, performance, harmony and songwriting. He is an acoustic and electric guitar examiner to diploma level with RGT and is currently appointed as an external examiner in Popular Music at the University of South Wales and Bournemouth University.

Steve's work on the use of the iPod as a music teaching tool is internationally recognised and was published in two peer reviewed academic journals in 2008, The British Journal of Music Education (BJME) and the Journal of Music,Technology and Education. In 2013, Steve's book 'Never Mind The Bee S#arps' was published, reaching number 1 in the iTunes (UK) music book charts.

As a guitar arranger and transcriber, Steve has completed more than fifty published works for Music Sales including album folios by Queens of The Stone Age (Songs for The Deaf), The Vines (Highly Evolved) and The Clash’s ‘Complete Chord Songbook’. Other arrangements include tracks by Foo Fighters, Morrissey, System Of A Down, Velvet Revolver, The Killers, Funeral For A Friend, Maximo Park, Nine Inch Nails and Kaiser Chiefs.

Steve Spencer is a conductor and trumpeter who has performed in a wide range of musical styles and ensembles. His performing experience encompasses Soul Bands, Brass Bands, Chamber Ensembles and Symphony Orchestras and he has rehearsed and conducted the University Choir and Orchestra in performances of classical and contemporary repertoire.

Steve is an experienced and committed music educator where he specialises in teaching the analysis and exploration of performance technique and the shaping of music in live and recorded performance.

Steve is currently working with colleagues in the development of the use of haptic feedback as a tool for the enhancement of trumpet pedagogy and investigating visual tools as a means to enhance acoustic awareness in trumpet students. He has travelled widely to present at international conferences and his work on the use of the iPod as a music teaching tool is internationally recognized. He has published in the British Journal of Music Education (BJME) and in Technology Education and Development where his chapter has been downloaded in over 100 countries.