YAMAHA MUSIC SCHOOL TO OPEN AT CROYDON’S FAIRFIELD HALLS (Your News)
By PAUL JOHNSON
The Yamaha Music Foundation’s flagship music education course for young children has been launched for the very first time in London on.
The school is based at Croydon’s Fairfield Halls, which re-opened in September following a multi-million pound Croydon restoration.
The Yamaha Music School is just one of several initiatives at Fairfield Halls, designed to engage, inspire and educate young people in the local community and further afield.
Established in Tokyo in 1954, the Yamaha Music Foundation offers a global music education programme, in over forty-five countries. More than five million children have learned music through it and it is the most trusted and proven early years music education in Japan. The Junior Music Course, for children aged four or five years old at the start, has been in the UK for nearly forty years. Well-attended schools are in locations such as Milford, Abingdon, Burton, Tamworth, Derby and Nottingham.
Fred Scott, BH Live’s Artistic Associate for Music Education at Fairfield Halls said, “With the launch in South London, our music education programme looks set to enter centre-stage. And justifiably so: Yamaha is known for quality, and this does not just apply to the products on offer, but also to its music education programmes and staff: teachers must go through a rigorous audition, training and qualification system.”
The Junior Music Course curriculum is one of ‘timely education’. The carefully researched programme comprises four two-year courses, designed with teaching approaches that evolve to suit the children as they develop. Lessons are comprehensive: they include singing, playing, listening, moving, reading and writing and make full musical use of the group format for the entire course pathway. Parents accompany children for the first two years to group lessons, which include up to ten students in a class. Individual piano lessons are added to the curriculum after the first few years.
Nigel Burrows, Yamaha Music Education Manager for the UK says: “In over forty years of being involved with Yamaha Music Schools, I have yet to see another programme that can produce such consistently high levels of creativity with such young students.”
Talented Yamaha students from around the world come together each year to showcase their own compositions, highlighting the musical goals of the programme: to be creative and expressive musicians, with a lifelong love for music – whether students go on later to be professional or amateur.
Families can apply to Fred Scott for info about places and course details: Fred.Scott@bhlive.org.uk