The music facilities in the Frankland Building are certainly world-class we have rooms for the
students to do one-to-one practice and have their instrumental lessons and also chamber
music rehearsals and that are designed by the same acoustic technicians as many of the UK's
music colleges the rooms are all connected to the recording studio that is in the centre of
the space so students can record each other from the different rooms in here six of the rooms have
grand pianos and are medium-sized practice rooms so suitable for chamber music activity
and we also have 12 smaller rooms that are still rooms that get used for one-to-one tuition so when
we say small they're actually great spaces for students to work in there is an organ practice
room a drumkit practice room and also a room that we use specifically for jazz ensemble activity
and so we're really fortunate to have had this space developed a couple of years ago and we've
seen the amount of practice that students do and the amount of work they do together has really
kind of gone up as a result of us being in this space Bramall Music Building opened in 2012 and
that's our kind of jewel in the crown for music because we've got the Elgar Concert Hall which
is a world-class concert hall where we perform with our own ensembles we can also use that space
to support the students with their academic learning so they use the Hall for performance
activity they use it for modules like sound recording so it's really good quality space
for them to have we've also got an organ in there that was installed which is a Garnier
organ which is unique in this country it's the only one and so the organ students and scholars
can use that as well we've got the dome rehearsal room and in the dome we have most of our ensemble
activity it's also the space that students perform their recitals for their degree course
and is a really flexible space so it gets used for things like BEAST the electro acoustic studios to
present their works and students also use it to present their own research in things like lecture
results so the CEMPR rooms which is where our early music activity takes place has a host of
early music instruments in there that students can access they can also borrow them for a whole term
to practice on them and have one-to-one lessons on those instruments they are climate controlled
because those instruments are really delicate and really unique but the students can use
those for one-to-one lessons they also have ensemble rehearsals in there as well
and again like all of our spaces those rooms are patched into our recording facilities so we can
record any ensemble from those spaces on the lower ground floor of the Bramall we've got some sound
recording facilities and the electro acoustic studios we've also got a percussion room in
there so all the first study percussionists and second study percussionists have access to lots
of instruments and over in this building we've got some spaces for those percussionists as well
and there's a computer cluster so the space that music students use when they need access
to specific computer software for their degree course in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts
we have the Barber Concert Hall that's a space that opened in 1945 we just celebrated the 75th
anniversary of that concert series and that's where we run professional series of concerts with
artists from across the UK and internationally we present concerts every Friday and lunchtime
that are free to the public and to students and also a Wednesday evening international series
and the hall also gets used for the students on a festival of music each year we put on an opera
production over there and on Saturday afternoons throughout the year we run a series of student
ensemble concerts in partnership with the Music Society we use the great hall over in
the Aston Webb building it's a fantastic space and it used to be used as a recording facility
for City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra before they got their own building in the city we perform
in there for the University carol service every year our brass ensemble performs for graduation
ceremonies and we perform with large ensembles for a number of special events throughout the year
we're really fortunate at the University to have a big open space in the middle of campus the Green
Heart and every June we give a proms concert in that space so we can erect a huge stage
welcome up to 5000 people to our performances and enjoy with a finale of fireworks
the music department is located in the central part of campus we're really fortunate to
be next to Old Joe we can look out from the Bramall Music Building onto Chancellor's Court
and all of our spaces that we use come off from that area so not only are we
physically part of the centre of campus but we're also the centre of activity as well