RCMJD welcomes new talent after summer of BBC Proms successes

Friday 28 September 2018

This September, the Royal College of Music Junior Department (RCMJD) welcomes 75 new pupils, including one of its youngest ever students joining its pioneering mini bass programme.

At just seven years old, Tommy Bailey is already an accomplished singer. He joins RCMJD’s highly successful mini bass course, established in 1985 by Caroline Emery in association with the Yorke Trust. The exciting initiative is RCMJD’s scheme for double bass beginners aged seven to 10, allowing students to learn the double bass on specially designed instruments in individual lessons and small groups.

Tommy and his classmates will be following in the footsteps of many successful RCMJD alumni. This summer, 16 alumni took part in the BBC Young Musician 40th Anniversary Prom for previous finalists and winners, including pianist Martin James Bartlett and cellist Laura van der Heijden. RCMJD students have won the BBC Young Musician competition three times in the last decade.

RCMJD alumnus Jacob Collier led his own BBC Prom this year. Jacob is a 23-year-old Grammy award-winning vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and arranger, who studied at the RCMJD between 2008 and 2010. Having made a guest appearance at the Quincy Jones Prom in 2016, James once again teamed up with conductor Jules Buckley and his Metropole Orkest in a special collaboration for the Proms, featuring a host of new tracks and several special guests.

Miranda Francis, Head of Junior Programmes comments: ‘Royal College of Music Junior Department students are enormously talented and highly motivated, and many of them go on to achieve great things in the profession. I am excited to see how their musical careers develop.’

Find out more about the Royal College of Music Junior Department here.