The Guildhall School

Pure excellence in the heart of London

Top Classical, March 2021
The Guildhall School of Music & Drama is one of the world’s leading conservatoires and drama schools, offering musicians, actors, stage managers and theatre technicians an inspiring environment in which to develop as artists and professionals.

The Guildhall School of Music first opened its doors on 27 September 1880, housed in a disused warehouse in the City of London. With 64 part-time students, it was the first municipal music college in Great Britain. The school quickly outgrew its first home, however, and in 1887 it moved to new premises in John Carpenter Street in a complex of educational buildings built by the Corporation of London to house it and the City’s two state schools. Since 1977 it has been next to the Barbican Arts Centre in the Barbican Complex.

The School is a global leader of creative and professional practice and promotes innovation, experiment and research. Rated No.1 specialist institution in the UK by the Guardian University Guide 2013 and 2014, it has over 800 students in higher education, drawn from nearly 60 countries around the world.

Today the school has a 308-seat drama and opera theatre, concert hall, lecture / recital hall and a small studio theatre. The students of the school regularly perform all over London. It has one of the most prestigious performing arts programs in the world, having been ranked the number one U.K. conservatoire in the 2019 Guardian league tables for music and as the sixth university in the world for performing arts in the 2020 QS World University Rankings.

Admission to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama is by a highly competitive audition. The School holds auditions for their music programs in London, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo and from 2021 drama auditions will be held in cities across the UK (including London, Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds, and Nottingham) along with international auditions in New York.

Among Guildhall’s notable alumni are trumpeter Alison Balsom, the composer Thomas Adès, the flautist Sir James Galway, the pianist Paul Lewis, the violinist Tasmin Little and the singers Kate Royal and Bryn Terfel. Also actors Ewan McGregor and Daniel Craig, and musicians Jacqueline du Pré and Sir Bryn Terfel studied there.

Key to the School’s musical curricula is its annual award for The Gold Medal, a performance competition that began in 1915 and had taken place uninterrupted until 2019. Of course, because of the global pandemic in 2020, the annual May performance had to be put on hold as teaching moved online during the summer term. “Because of COVID we needed to be swift in our response to ensure things like The Gold Medal could occur and, very importantly, that in-person classes could still take place with full scale participation,” said Julian Hepple, head of recording and audio visual at Guildhall School. “To make that happen we quickly turned to Dante and Dante Domain Manager. And, in September, as we returned to in-person teaching, we were able to hold The Gold Medal and broadcast the performance online.”