Loughborough Schools Music, an outstanding Foundation facility, has enjoyed a busy couple of months full of exciting events and performance opportunities for its pupils. 

February saw the return of the Loughborough Music Competitions, an annual event for talented young musicians from across the Midlands to gain valuable performance experience, feedback from expert adjudicators and the chance to win cash prizes. We witnessed so many fantastic performances across all six categories, including Strings, Woodwind, Brass, Piano, Singing and Percussion. 

Just one week later, we hosted our Junior and Senior Musician of the Year concerts showcasing the variety of talent that our Music centre is home to. 

The wealth of opportunity pupils have to perform on-stage in front of an audience helps to build the foundations of a successful future in Music, as well as encouraging friendships between pupils from across the Loughborough Schools Foundation to blossom.  

Music Scholar and Loughborough High School pupil, Anya, comments, “my favourite thing about studying music at LSF is that it’s a place where we can perform alongside others who are equally enthusiastic about music, where we can spur each other on to become better musicians”. 

As both a Music Scholar and Music Prefect, Anya is involved with every aspect of Loughborough Schools Music’s offer and highlighted some key moments of this experience; 

In your own words, please explain what Loughborough Schools Music offers you. 

It’s a unique opportunity to develop your musical ability through individual tuition and to take part in a wide range of different ensembles — it’s also a great chance to make new friends! As Music Scholars, we each have a mentor to help guide us through our time at the School and we receive ‘movement for musicians’ classes which focus on being aware of our posture and breathing; I’ve found that my playing has become freer and more confident as a result. 

What does the role of Music Prefect involve? 

As a Music Prefect, we take it in turns to introduce Lunchtime Live each week – a chance for soloists, duets, groups and ensembles to perform in front of a live audience, putting on a fantastic concert full of musical variety – and, at the end of each term, we give a speech in front of our School about all the music events that have happened that term. Both, offer a really great opportunity to practice speaking in front of an audience. Later this year, we will also be organising the Senior Musicians’ Dinner which is a light-hearted event for musicians from all Sixth Forms at LSF to enjoy a nice meal and listen to each other perform as part of various bands. 

What performance opportunities are available and what do you like best about them?  

We have the main event of the year coming up in a couple of weeks, the Spring Concert, during which we will perform at De Montfort Hall. This is an amazing opportunity to play in a real concert hall with a large live audience. I also really love Lunchtime Live because each week we have the chance to sign up and perform a piece we’ve been working on in front of an audience.  

It’s great that there’s such a large range of concerts, from evensong on a Winter evening to ‘Al Fresco’ outdoors in the summer. Whilst I love the excitement and adrenaline of being in concerts, I really love performing with my friends and supporting each other. 

We look forward to seeing our musicians perform in the Spring Concert at De Montfort Hall this weekend. It’s set to be a fantastic event full of talented performances, which gives our pupils their chance to shine. There are still a few tickets left! To book, click here