#RAMplaysON - Update 9

This week we celebrated nominations for our students, staff and alumni in the Parliamentary Jazz Awards 2020. We have spotted members of our community nominated in the instrumentalist, ensemble, newcomer and services to jazz categories. Congratulations are due to Academy Head of Jazz Nick Smart who is on the shortlist for the Jazz Education Award. The winners will be announced on 30 June, you can view the full list of nominees on the London Jazz News website.

For our latest lockdown blog, the Artist Development team spoke to Viotti Lecturer in Performance Studies Peter Sheppard Skaerved. Peter has been busy adding violin performances to his YouTube channel and has been keeping in touch with Academy students online and by letter. You can read the full interview on our website.

Earlier this year we launched our 200 Pieces project, a series of compositions written to celebrate our Bicentenary in 2022. While our buildings are closed we will be sharing some of our 200 Pieces as virtual premieres. Amorphia by composer Jesse Jones was performed and recorded by Wenhan Jiang at his home. We uploaded the full performance to our social media channels where it has been viewed over 6,000 times, the Facebook video is embedded below.

Academy composition alumnus and ARAM Cliff Masterson has produced and arranged this remote performance of 1980s Grammy award-winning hit St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion) by John Parr.

Alumna and mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean has collaborated with her father, composer and violist Brett Dean.

Period horn player Isaac Shieh has been practicing Jacques François Gallay, there is a clip on his Instagram channel.

The latest Kanneh-Mason family live stream features music by Villa-Lobos and JS Bach, the live performances continue on Fridays.

Musical theatre student Thomas Grant performed the song Love Letters as made famous by Ketty Lester.

Vocal student Mia Inglott shared a four-part close harmony arrangement of Bare Necessities from The Jungle Book.