The Birmingham Young Composers Project runs every year for students between the ages of 14-18. Despite the distance it was for me to travel to Royal Birmingham Conservatoire I applied to do this project from October 2017- March 2018.

The aim of this project was to expose young composers to what it would be like to work in collaborations with different media. For example, the group that I was part of composed the music for a musical written by an external actor. Other options for projects were a dancing collaboration or a film collaboration. I chose to be part of the musical group as it was something that I had never been part of before and knew that in my future I would like to work with actors and directors.

During the sessions of the Young Composers Project, we were given the opportunity to work with the different options and then were given a choice on which one we wanted to be part of for the final concert. My first choice was to be part of the musical group and my second option was to work with dance. This was because we were working with the choreographer Laura Vanhulle. I was very impressed by her style of dance and felt it would have been interesting to include a visual element to the piece that I had composed.

One of the other options we were given was to compose music to fit with a short film. This session was led by Segun Akinola who is a very well-known composer who most recently composed the new theme tune for Doctor Who for the BBC. In this group we would be working with short films that were each related to different moods. At the time the way that music could convey a mood was not something that really interested me. However, this then led to being the main focus of my Extended Project Qualification.

I would really recommend taking part in a project like YCP as I found that for me it confirmed that composition is something I want to study. It helped to show me how composers work in real life situations and the style of projects that I would be working on during my time at the Conservatoire.

Youtube:

Full Musical 

An Ordinary Day – Jude

The Rose – Charlote

Empress’ Demands – Catherine

Under the Bridge – Megan

One Day – Isobel