The University of Leeds
The University of Leeds
01 October 2007
LEEDS HAS A REPUTATION FOR CLUBBING AND FESTIVALS, BUT IS ITS CLASSICAL MUSIC SCENE QUITE SO GLITTERING? CHRIS HORKAN VISITS THE UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
'I've been here for six years now so it can't be that bad.' Eleri Pound's summary of Leeds is not the most ringing of endorsements. But like most people who have lived in the West Yorkshire city, the 25-year-old PhD student from Cardiff knows it has a knack of bringing people in - and keeping them there.
Leeds has plenty to offer its 500,000-strong population: dozens of museums, theatres and galleries; some of the best shopping in the country; stadiums capable of hosting major sporting events; and arguably the best clubbing scene in the UK.
Musical attractions in Leeds include Opera North, the Leeds International Piano Competition and the Leeds City Council-organised International Concert Season - the country's largest local authority-run music programme, which features almost 200 events a year.
Festivals are big in Leeds too. The high-profile Leeds Festival welcomes 70,000 people each year, while in 2006 the O2 Wireless Festival arrived at the nearby Harewood House. In the city itself, FuseLeeds offers a biennial series of cutting-edge music concerts hosted by the West Yorkshire Playhouse and Leeds College of Music, the largest music college in the UK.
'I chose Leeds because I knew it had a great music scene and because the school of music had a good vibe'
Between the music college, two art and design colleges and two universities - the University of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan University - Leeds boasts a full-time student population well in excess of 55,000. With plenty of cafés, bars, restaurants and music venues to cater for them, it's little wonder the city was recently voted the Best UK University Destination in the Independent.
With an undergraduate intake of around 110 students a year, the University of Leeds holds between 350 and 400 music students at any one time and is one of the largest music departments in the country. The school is mainly academic and research-based, with music psychology, film music and ethnomusicology among its specialisms. Prospective undergraduate students can choose between a BA in music or popular and world music, a BA or BSc in music, media and electronics, and one of 13 joint honours programmes with subjects including languages, history, theology, computing and artificial intelligence.
A further course - the BMus - welcomes 10 to 20 talented performers into the school each year. Professor Clive Brown, who has been head of the music department for two years and is one of around 20 academic staff, describes this programme as 'in-between what a university and what a conservatoire traditionally does - the mixture of the academic and the practical'. The four-year programme includes a third year in Europe (typically Holland, Germany or the Czech Republic) or North America.
Twenty-year-old Sam Edgington entered his third year on the popular and world music course this autumn. 'I chose Leeds because I knew it had a great music scene and because the school of music had a good vibe,' he says.
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