Strings
As a student in the Strings Department at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire you will be part of a dynamic and exceptionally supportive student and staff fraternity. Strings Staff include internationally renowned performers and pedagogues.
We foster creativity and individuality through our bold and varied performance programme offering a wide-ranging agenda of solo, chamber music and orchestral performance opportunities, many internal and external recital possibilities and frequent from international artists and visiting tutors.
Bowed
Baroque lessons and orchestral projects are an integral part of the performance programme, with several students opting to focus primarily on early music.
BowedPlucked
The Plucked Strings Department offers expert tuition and guidance to develop your performance skills in harp, guitar and lute.
PluckedGuitar
Our aim in the Guitar Department is to equip all our students with the necessary skills to enter a music profession upon graduation.
GuitarOur staff
Around 50 full-time members of staff (including support staff) and nearly 200 visiting specialist tutors work at the Conservatoire.
Our staffOur tutors
We also have a variety of tutors who provide specialist teaching and advice within the Strings department.
Our tutorsBVMA partnership
The British Violin Making Association (BVMA) and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (RBC) will be working together over the coming years to provide opportunities for players and makers to connect.
BVMA partnershipStaff spotlight
Nick Trygstad is Head of Strings at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.
For over 18 years, Nick was Principal Cello of Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra. Alongside his performing Nick has also taught at the RNCM for over 15 years, and it is his love of teaching and learning that attracted him to RBC.
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I'm so excited about this new role of
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international chair of the violin at
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Royal Birmingham Conservatoire first of all
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I love teaching and I really enjoy give
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giving students the opportunity to
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experience what they actually are
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capable of quite a lot of the time
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doesn't matter how good you are you're
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still going to have things that you need
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to work on and it's my job here to
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empower the students to give them a road
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map if you like so that I will give them
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some short-term medium and long-term
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goals my experience working so far with
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t has been really great um I think she
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uh really cares about each lesson and I
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think she in a small amount of time has
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said a lot of things that I can do to
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really improve my playing I can still
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clearly remember what she said uh on the
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master class yesterday that she will
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would like to offer everybody in this
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conservat to uh have the ability to be
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an artist in the future like what to do
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and how to do I feel that Birmingham as
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is such a marvelous cultural center and
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so the opportunity to build on that with
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the education and hopefully really
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encouraging um some younger people to
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begin to realize that they have on their
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doorstep this incredible facility um
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that was something that I found very
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exciting and I really wanted to be a
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part of everybody has got very
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distinctive personality and their very
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distinctive style of playing and it's my
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job to build on that and to expand that
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I feel very inspired by having someone
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like as experienced violinist as her
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come to play thing that immediately
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impressed me about the students was
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their absolute enthusiasm and dedication
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as well as their marvelous support of
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each other so you know I was teaching um
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students in in a class kind of situation
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and it was completely full they'd all
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come to support the students who were
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playing and that is very rare and it's
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very special I think that this is um
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hugely inspiring and it's very
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encouraging I'm quite certain that we
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are going to achieve an enormous amount