Guildhall Artist in Performance: Vocal Department

Vocal Studies

The Vocal Studies course is intended for singers who wish to develop their vocal technique and experience within a carefully structured course that is designed to promote existing abilities and to develop previously neglected areas of experience.

The course provides:

  • singing lessons
  • individual coaching
  • classes in French mélodie, German Lieder, Italian aria, Russian, Spanish and English repertoire
  • movement classes
  • languages as applicable, linked to the song classes

Other opportunities within the course include:

  • Opera Associates
  • Opera Ensemble
  • Creative Voices

Opera Associates is a group of approximately 24 singers with operatic potential who are selected by internal audition from the Year 4 undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Linked to the Opera Department, they receive preliminary training in drama, movement, make-up and combat, and form a chorus, if required, for the Opera Department's public productions. They also receive coaching on roles and repertoire with Opera Course staff and have occasional opportunities to take roles and understudies in productions.

Students participating in Opera Ensemble are selected by internal audition from the Year 4 undergraduate and postgraduate courses. They receive training in drama, movement and make-up. Scenes from opera as well as lighter repertoire from Operetta and Music Theatre are prepared musically and dramatically for presentation in a staged concert programme format. The concerts are presented in at least 2 performances within the Guildhall School as well as at a variety of venues in London and throughout England.

Jaimee Marshall

'Guildhall has provided many valuable outside performance opportunities in solo performance and on larger ensemble scales. It is incredibly important for postgraduate students to maintain an awareness of the outside professional world if they're aiming to have a career in the music industry.'
Jaimee Marshall, Postgraduate Vocal Studies

The Creative Voices programme selects a small number of singers who are each individually paired with one of the composers from the Guildhall School composition department and a pianist from the accompanist programme to work together on the creation of new repertoire. They also study twentieth and twenty-first century experimental vocal repertoire. The students work closely with the world-renowned performer Sarah Walker on their repertoire, interpretation and concert presentation.

Department of Vocal Studies teaching staff

Audition

Candidates prepare six items as follows:

  • a seventeenth-century or eighteenth-century Italian song or aria
  • a German Lied
  • a French mélodie
  • a song by a British or American composer of the twentieth-century
  • an oratorio aria in the original language or in English
  • an opera or operetta aria in the original key and preferably in the original language

At the audition, presentation of one item will be at the candidate's choice. The audition panel will then select a further two or three. Candidates who wish to be considered for both the Vocal Studies course and the Opera Studies course should prepare for audition the six items listed above plus an additional operatic aria. One of the two operatic arias must be in English, either original, or in translation.

Contact: music@gsmd.ac.uk