The Royal Academy of Music has just sent me a long list of “Honorands” who received diplomas from the Principal and the Chair of Governors at an annual ceremony in Marylebone Road today.
There are two categories for these honorary awards: the first is for former students, the second for others.
Wordsearching the list for the word jazz , and I light on the names of five very deserving people from the jazz community:
Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) >
Gwilym Simcock jazz
Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (HonARAM)
Peter Churchill professor of jazz, RAM
John Fordham, jazz writer
Stephen Rubie Director, 606 Jazz Club
Oliver Weindling Co-Director, The Vortex Jazz Club/Owner, Babel Records
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The head of jazz at the RAM since 2000 , when he took over from Graham Collier (thank you to a diligent LondonJazz reader for this info!) has been Gerard Presencer (above)
Categories: miscellaneous
Well, I may have started the programme – and received an HonRAM myself – but I handed it back in protest at the treatment I received when I resigned. I was offered a consultancy post, being as they said ‘too valuable to lose’, which became ‘good riddance’ in a few short months. It seems they wanted to keep me in place while Gerard was appointed and this was worth a few bob to them. But it was the way they did it, and their use of my name to promote the course in their prospectus, written after they showed me the door, which really grated. As one high-up retiree who I met later said: ‘I’ve enjoyed my time there. I wasn’t shafted like you and some of the others’.
I could also mention the time a few years before when I was called into a meeting and told to cut the course numbers in half. The reasoning being that as there were no fee-paying (non-EU) students on the course we had to contract, presumably to allow more room for the Japanese and Korean piano students.
Water under the bridge after all this time of course, but I feel it has a relevance to the post. Congrats to those who have their new honours, and to the students who from all I hear are still good.
Congrats on the site, too. Keep up the good work.