Royal Birmingham Conservatoire

Selected by

Julian Lloyd Webber, Solo cellist/conductor

Julian Lloyd Webber OBE is a British solo cellist, conductor and broadcaster, a former principal of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the founder of the ‘In Harmony’ music education programme. In September 2020, in recognition of his tenure, Lloyd Webber was appointed Emeritus Professor of Performing Arts by Birmingham City University.
Location

20 Jennens Road, Birmingham, B4 7XR

0121 331 5901
www.bcu.ac.uk/conservatoire
Architecture

Architects: Feilden Clegg Bradley (www.fcbstudios.com)

The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire ’s new state-of-the-art home is the first purpose-built music college to be constructed in the UK since 1987 and is the only one in the country which has been specifically designed to cater for the demands of the digital age.

It houses five performance venues: a concert hall with the capacity of 500 seats and a full orchestra, a 150-seat recital hall, The Lab – a ‘black box’ experimental music space, a 100 seat organ studio and the Eastside Jazz Club – as well as 70 practice rooms of various sizes.

The aim was to create acoustic environments that would be amongst the very best in the world. The five venues each have their own particular character, visually and acoustically, the Concert Hall being the most complex. A combination of fine and larger scale diffusion and sound scattering treatments cover the walls and work to produce a rich, even and diffuse sound field.

The new building is in the heart of the City’s learning quarter, on the border between Birmingham and Aston. It acts as a cultural hub, contributing to the performing and visual arts within the city and region, as well as for students of the University.

The combination of careful attention to purpose-built detail, together with an over-arching vision of artistic and educational ambition, has delivered a lasting monument to the cultural investment of the City and the University.
Interesting Facts

In May 2001 Lloyd Webber was granted the first busker’s licence on the London Underground. He was launching the scheme to award licences to approved buskers by playing a selection of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s songs in Westminster station just after rush hour.
Resources

Feilden Clegg Bradley
www.huftonandcrow.com

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire © C Hufton&Crow

Greater Birmingham might sprawl but its city centre is surprisingly concise. One can easily walk from the beginning of Broad Street on the west side, past Symphony Hall, past the Town Hall, down the length of New Street and emerge on the east side of the Bullring Shopping Centre inside half an hour.

Eastside is where this journey begins. For those who continue to persevere along the rather unwelcoming Jennens Road for another few minutes will discover, on the right-hand side, a remarkable new building which is both practical and architecturally stimulating in equal measure.

Opened in 2017, the spectacular Royal Birmingham Conservatoire was the first new purpose-built music college in the United Kingdom for a generation. I was privileged to be RBC’s Principal from 2015 to 2020 and to witness first-hand the transformation in its fortunes. Not only did the Conservatoire move from its former cramped building in the misnamed Paradise Circus to its state-of-the art new premises; it received Royal status, merged with the Birmingham School of Acting, rejuvenated its important outreach programme and its students won copious numbers of awards including BBC Young Musician of the Year 2018.

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire © C Hufton&Crow

The new building certainly played its part. With five performing spaces, including the magnificent and acoustically acclaimed Bradshaw Hall, seven recording studios and more than one hundred teaching and rehearsal rooms, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire has every facility that a present-day music student could need. Its light and airy atrium is a marvel which helps to create the spirit of togetherness amongst professors and students that has proved such a key to its recent successes.

Bradshaw Hall has already become a firm favourite of both BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM and is a chosen venue for major recording companies impressed not only by its acoustics but also by its absolute silence and its adaptability. With a building which is the envy of many other music colleges and the new HS2 terminus arriving literally on its doorstep the Conservatoire’s future is bright indeed.

... a remarkable new building which is both practical and architecturally stimulating in equal measure.

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire

... a remarkable new building which is both practical and architecturally stimulating in equal measure.

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