Kicking off 2021 with Virtual One-to-One Mentoring

We are delighted to share that we will be delivering over 40 hours of one-to-one mentoring sessions to many of our young musicians over the coming weeks.

An integral component of the Development and Junior Programmes, we aim to provide every musician we support with a one-to-one mentoring session during the year. In spite of restrictions and the continued challenges created by the pandemic, we continue to deliver key opportunities to our young musicians online.

Since last March, we have delivered a plethora of performance and development opportunities to our young musicians, including 11 virtual workshops across a range of musical disciplines, four virtual masterclasses led by top industry professionals, and two virtual concerts, broadcast online and watched by thousands of our supporters worldwide.

Whilst the adaptation to providing opportunities digitally has brought certain limitations, it has also helped us reach a new level of accessibility and inclusivity, with many more musicians able to take part without the need to travel. We are also continuing to develop all of our opportunities based on feedback from musicians taking part, striving to improve our support wherever we can.
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Each musician is paired with a mentor in line with their particular musical interests so that they can gain from the session beyond work on technique and performance; mentoring sessions are a brilliant opportunity to delve into conversations around the music industry, from avenues of specialism and conservatoire education to career aspirations.

We are incredibly excited to be working with 16 fantastic mentors to deliver the upcoming sessions.

Among them are historical performance specialist and principal cellist with the Academy of Ancient Music Sarah MacMahon; bass clarinet specialist Jason Alder; versatile vocalist Holly Petrie; new music specialist and flautist Gavin Osborn; Three Trapped Tigers drummer Adam Betts; electronic music specialist and creative technologist Pete Bennett; interdisciplinary folk musician James Patrick Gavin, and our beloved Ambassador and violin virtuoso Chloë Hanslip.

We are very much looking forward to kicking off this exciting project and our first Programme opportunity of 2021.