My role with the Birmingham Royal Ballet

Final year Music student, Amira, tells us how she came to be involved as a Music assistant at the Birmingham Royal Ballet.

“First year of university saw a challenging time. The Covid pandemic kept many of us from our friends and families, facing exacerbated mental health concerns due to isolation and for students a very foreign approach to learning – over zoom/teams. 

For the University of Birmingham Music Society, orchestral ensembles could not continue as usual, and the establishment of an online talk series for those interested in orchestra was born. I attended these talks regularly and enjoyed meeting other orchestral musicians. Then one of the weeks the guest speaker invited was a certain Paul Murphy – principal conductor of the Birmingham Royal Ballet. It would be an understatement to say that I was ecstatic! 

The talk began, and I remained nervously off camera – (though to be fair, to be on camera at that time was a real mark of social comfort) – and at the QnA I bombarded the orchestral manager at the time (Leeloo Creed), with detailed questions, from the challenges of conducting the Rose Adage from Sleeping Beauty, to whether Acosta would be opening the next season with Don Quixote…(I can now confirm that he absolutely did, my predictions were accurate!) 

After the talk I contacted Daniele Rosina, the head of orchestral studies, and asked to be put in contact with Paul. Two coffee dates later I was offered a job as the Music assistant at the Birmingham Royal Ballet, and my role has permitted me to work with experienced orchestral players and their managers, learn about budgeting and running auditions, and booking deps, as well as work with the marketing team on deals for students, and engagement work. I most recently was able to do minutes for a meeting between the orchestral managers of the most significant opera and ballet companies in the UK”.