An Overview
You begin your postgraduate studies with the core of your musical personality – the skills, understandings and attitudes that define you as a traditional musician or piper – already established. Your postgraduate studies should nurture that existing artistic personality so that you can really make a difference in the fields in which you choose to work.
The programme offers advanced training to talented traditional musicians from a diverse range of undergraduate degrees or their equivalent, allowing you to refine and extend your musicianship in the context of your own aspirations. Most importantly, we have designed it so that you take ownership of the learning process throughout the degree and beyond it, whether in the professional world or in further studies (such as a PhD).
Our staff are professional performers, composers, and scholars of Scottish traditional music (and beyond) with active careers. They understand the challenges that you’ll face in your own career and can provide help and advice as you progress. As well as working with our core staff, you’ll get the opportunity to learn from visiting artists and academics from all over the world.
There’s a great atmosphere in the department and the Conservatoire as a whole; it’s a close-knit community where you end up performing and gigging with other students and staff, and making friends for life.
As for professional and institutional collaborations, we work closely with the National Piping Centre, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig and the Celtic Connections festival in delivering a varied and vocationally robust experience for its students. We also possess long-standing exchange agreements with a host of European and North American universities, allowing you to study for a term abroad, including the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Sweden; the Sibelius Academy, Finland; and the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick.
Piping tuition on the MMus is delivered in collaboration with the National Piping Centre, which is internationally recognised as a centre of excellence in Highland Bagpipe teaching.