Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music (RCM) is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including performance, composition, conducting, music theory and history, and has trained some of the most important figures in international music life. The RCM also undertakes research, with particular strengths in performance practice and performance science.
Not to be confused with the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal Conservatory of Music, or the Royal College of Music, Stockholm.
The RCM has over 900 students from more than 50 countries, with professors who include many who are musicians with worldwide reputations.
The college is one of the four conservatories of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and a member of Conservatoires UK. Its buildings are directly opposite the Royal Albert Hall on Prince Consort Road, next to Imperial College and among the museums and cultural centres of Albertopolis.
Curriculum[edit]
The college teaches all aspects of Western classical music from undergraduate to doctoral level. There is a junior department, where 300 children aged 8 to 18 are educated on Saturdays.[16]
Partnership[edit]
Since August 2011, RCM has been collaborating with Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore, and now offers both undergraduate and taught postgraduate degree programmes, jointly conferred by both institutions.[17]
Performance venues[edit]
The RCM has a wide variety of concert venues including the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, a 468-seat barrel-vaulted concert hall designed by Blomfield, built in 1901 and extensively restored in 2008–09. The Britten Theatre seats 400, and was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1986 and is used for opera, ballet, music and theatre. There is also a 150-seat recital hall dating from 1965, as well as several smaller recital rooms, including three organ-equipped Parry Rooms.
A £40 million development was completed in 2021 and the estate’s footprint was almost doubled including the creation of two new performance spaces, the Performance Hall which seats 140 people, and the Performance Studio, an intimate venue for solo and chamber performance.
