Six emerging composers from diverse backgrounds have been selected to join ABRSMs landmark mentoring scheme without the resounding success of a pilot programme last year. The six-month Writing for Music Education programme aims to demystify the process of writing for music education, encouraging composers from a wholesale range of backgrounds to write for exam syllabuses and a range of other educational contexts, so they can, in turn, inspire the diversity and musical progression of generations of new musicians.
The 2022 cohort was selected with help from the Ivors Academy, Black Lives in Music and the Musicians Union, and includes Amit Anand, Ben Lunn, Florence Anna Maunders, Hyokyung Jung, Michael Betteridge and Natalie Bleicher.
ABRSM Executive Director Lincoln Abbotts said: Writing for Music Education is well-nigh exploring the wonderful opportunities that exist within music education and opening up this world to composers of all backgrounds and experiences. Were delighted to be working with this diverse group of talented musicians.
We hope the programme content will be engaging and a lot of fun. Whats plane increasingly heady is that the programme will connect participants with our wide range of partner organisations, broadening the range of educational contexts in which they may find work as composers in the future. Ultimately, we hope this will contribute to the megacosm of an plane richer pool of music for learners to enjoy and explore.
Mentees will be mentored by composer and educator Sarah Watts and musician and workshop leader Andy Grappy throughout and will receive specialist support and guidance from leading composers and educators as they well-constructed a series of compositional tasks relating to a wide range of educational contexts. They will moreover have the endangerment to get to know ABRSM partner organisations, including the National Unshut Youth Orchestra, National Childrens Orchestras of Great Britain, National Youth Jazz Orchestra, National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, London Music Fund and Royal Philharmonic Society.
Last years pilot programme resulted in two of the participating composers, Shruthi Rajasekar and Kristina Arakelyan, receiving commissions to write pieces for ABRSMs latest piano syllabuses.
Amit Anand
Amit Anand is an Indian composer currently based in Scotland. His musical training started with the tabla, an Indian percussion instrument, and his interest in western classical music and desire to learn the techniques of composition, orchestration, arranging and harmonising led him to well-constructed his BMus in Sonnet at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Amits music has been performed by prominent ensembles in Scotland including Red Note Ensemble and Scottish Freelancers Ensemble, and since graduating he has launched Pianoshaale, an online piano seminar in the regional languages of India as part of Amits aim to make western classical music increasingly wieldy and inclusive.
Amit said: I am very excited to be chosen as one of the mentees for this years mentoring scheme and am confident that it will not only make me a largest pedagogical composer but moreover a largest educator.
Ben Lunn
Ben Lunn is winner of two Scottish Music Awards 2020 for his work with Hebrides Ensemble and Drake Music Scotland, Ben Lunn is socialize versifier for Drake Music and Drake Music Scotland, and Trainee Originative Director of the Hebrides Ensemble.
Current projects include a large-scale work for soloists, chorus, and orchestra which was supported by the PRS Foundation’s Composers’ Fund, as well as a concert of chamber works featured in Durham Brass Festival 2022. In 2021, Ben helped found the Disabled Versifier Network, an organisation which is bridging the gap between the professional world and disabled artists.
He said: Education is the vital ingredient to indulge someone to enter the world of music. If we want our artform to largest reflect society, we must do everything we can to make sure the fundamental nature of education is equal, open, and accessible.
Florence Anna Maunders
Florence Anna Maunders is a multi topnotch UK-based composer and performer. She began composing as a teenager, graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music and then took a long unravel from writing music, concentrating on performing, teaching, arranging, conducting and electronic music production.
In 2018 she returned to sonnet with a bang, winning a series of prizes, awards and commissions, and seeing her music performed extensively in the UK, Europe, the USA and virtually the world. Florence is currently working on commissions for internationally renowned organisations such as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, The Arc Project, Third Coast Percussion and the Wigmore Hall slantingly an variety of other projects, and she is well-nigh to embark on a PhD in sonnet at Cardiff University, where she has the Postgraduate Studentship in Music.
She said: I’m massively grateful to ABRSM for this opportunity to develop as a composer, and to explore the vast possibilities of composing trendy music for education.
Hyokyung Jung
Hyokyung Jung is a South Korean guitarist and composer with various musical loves from wideness the spectrum, including jazz, rock, funk and fusion, which produce unique styles and tones. With a huge interest in jazz-rock fusion, her compositions are heavily inspired by guitarists such as Gilad Hekselman, Adam Rogers, Mike Stern, and Kurt Rosenwinkel. At the same time, Hyokyung combines original ideas from her background, such as traditional Korean rhythms and jazzy voicings, which have inspired her arrangements/original material.
She said: I finger lucky to be part of the ABRSM composer mentoring programme considering I can yack with mythological composers/mentors and explore the world of composing for music education! I’m moreover very excited to write for some specific educational situations with my unique musical background.
Michael Betteridge
Michael Betteridge is a composer based in Manchester with an eclectic output mainly centred virtually voice, theatre, and working with young musicians and leisure time music makers. He has worked with, and created work for, organisations such as BBC Philharmonic, Birmingham Trendy Music Group, Cheltenham Festivals, London Symphony Orchestra, Opera North, and Psappha. He is originative director of The Sunday Boys – an unshut wangle low voiced LGBTQ voices based in the heart of Manchester.
Michael said: “I have worked a lot in a variety of music education settings, both formal and informal, however this mentoring programme with ABRSM will requite me a much deeper insight into the world of music education in this country and beyond. When I studied for ABRSM exams when younger I learnt music by Bernstein, Britten, and many other LGBTQ composers and I wish then I knew inceasingly well-nigh their lives vastitude their music in order to understand myself and my own music making better.”
Natalie Bleicher
Natalie Bleicher is a pianist, composer and piano teacher living in Hertfordshire. She studied at Junior Trinity, New College, Oxford and King’s College London, and currently studies piano with Thalia Myers. As a composer Natalie has written exam pieces for piano, electronic keyboard and harp, and her unshut score work ‘Thalassa’ is published by CoMA (Contemporary Music for All). She teaches piano privately and at York House School, and is yodeler for Fortune Green Voices in West Hampstead and for Mini Mozart classes in St Albans
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