MA Musical Direction
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About this course
Our MA in Musical Direction is designed to fully-prepare highly-skilled musicians to embark upon a career as a musical director. With tailored one-to-one classes, students will hone their musicianship and be exposed to a wide-range of working practices, working alongside key practitioners, companies and industry professionals from across the region.
This MA encourages students to interrogate the role of the musical director and redefine it for themselves, through the continued collaborative, student-led development of new work across the year.
With collaboration and individual artistry at the heart of all of our Theatre MAs, students will leave this course not only fully equipped to adapt to the changing face of theatre, but also with the skill set and tenacity required to drive that change.
Assessment
You will be assessed at the end of each of three trimesters on Applied Musical Theatre Context, Musicianship and Group Musicianship. These practical assessments will focus on putting into practice the skills received during that trimester. This may include one or more of the following: conducting, orchestration, working with singers and accompaniment skills. Finally, you will be assessed on your Major Project, which culminates in a production/s in third term. This assessment will cover the Project's inception, development and performance/s, largely based upon a dissertation you will produce.
Modules
Creative and Collaborative Thinking
Students will explore various methods of creative thinking and problem-solving, which will become the initial starting points for later development of new work.
Weekly sessions will focus on case studies of performers, work or artists to critically analyse how research is used in the development of new work and in the telling of personal narratives or stories.
Case studies may include practitioners such as Kate Tempest, Frantic Assembly, Pablo Helguera, Javaad Alipoor, debbie tucker green, Lin-Manuel Miranda or other contemporaries.
This work will be student-led, tailored to the student’s area of interest. Students will interrogate the Musical Director's role by pushing the boundaries of what makes theatre through collaborative work with the other MAs.
Applied Musical Theatre Context
Working alongside the Musical Theatre Company students and Creatives, Musical Directing students will take part in acting through song and musical theatre context classes.
Here they will develop audition technique as an accompanist, as well as analytical skills, dissecting the key components of song (keys, chord progression and structure etc) and lyrics in relation to their place and time in the musical theatre landscape.
They will study style and genre and use this as a starting point to prepare and perform (and potentially develop) work of their choosing.
Group Musicianship
Musical Directors will work with the Actor Musicians on various projects throughout the year, exploring the myriad ways to portray narrative and character through music and generate authentic work quickly and collaboratively to a performance-ready level.
In these sessions, students will work both collaboratively and in a more traditional hierarchy, where the musical directors will learn how to ‘run a rehearsal’ with a company of actors/musicians.
Students will explore a range of styles and pieces in these sessions - both set and devised in class. Skills developed in this module include musical arrangement (as a leader and as a group), conducting, and teaching both group and individual singing.
Musicianship
These one-to-one classes give students the time to work on chosen areas on their musicianship with an assigned tutor.
These sessions aim to fill gaps in knowledge, expand skillsets, and identify any components of their craft that need development. It also gives students the opportunity to explore styles and directions that they may want to pursue.
Major Project
The Major Project will be developed over a term and will be a based on the student’s area of interest, culminating in a performance and/or sharing . Major projects can be in collaboration with other MA students from across the Theatre MAs or something entirely individual.
Tuition fees
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The Uni
Leeds Conservatoire
School of Performance
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Music
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£13k
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