Professional program
Become a pro!
The Professional Program is aimed at students who aspire to a professional career as musicians. It helps students acquire a high level of skill, bolstered by an initial professional network which serves as a springboard from which to begin a professional career. It should be treated as a full-time activity.
The Professional Program is a complete, eclectic and diverse training course which brings together in condensed form the essential elements from which to build an artistic project. It seeks to build in students a professional level of instrumental skill and also the ability to work as composer/arranger/orchestrator in a range of styles, including CAM and knowledge of the music industry. Our pedagogical aims are not just about knowledge but also about developing to the greatest possible extent students’ musical potential and personal artistic aspirations.
Duration: 3 years + 2 years (Initial Cycle + Further Cycle).
Academic Year: September to June.
Entry auditions: from February
Teaching approach
With three decades of experience behind us, we have gradually built-up our professional cycle into an initial 3-year course followed by a further program lasting 2 years. This structure is similar to a standard university career (BA + MA). We have found that this 3+2 format enables students to develop a high level of competence in a reasonable time, even for students whose level is moderate when they first enter the school.
With hindsight, we find that a shorter professional course (1 or 2 years), is either too concentrated, leaving insufficient time to digest fully the acquired knowledge, or too patchy, offering less chance of entering the workplace or of gaining access to more advanced studies.
From an academic perspective, there appear to be two main routes towards attaining the musical skill required for a professional career: either a traditional classical training with the aim of becoming a classical musician, or knowledge of jazz and its derivative forms, jazz being a central branch in the complex tree of 20th century music. Jazz is considered a major part of any learning process, leading to highly flexible competence in all current musical styles.
At IMEP we have found ourselves studying and practicing many different forms of music, including a good basic grounding in classical music, which is particularly useful, particularly when writing music for the screen. Our learning strategy provides the best response to the music-industry’s ever-changing requirements. It enables trainees to respond flexibly to a wide range of demand, this being an essential ability which they must acquire in order to find work.
