Masters in Music & Digital Humanities

Dia duit!

I'm Emma, a proudly South African opera singer, vocal coach & arts administrator currently residing as a Foreign-Birth National in The Republic of Ireland.

Upon completing two degrees (Bachelor of Arts & Honours, both with Distinction in Music & with Academic Full Colours) at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape, I took my mentor's advice & left the academic space to explore the broad work environments available to me as a qualified opera singer & developing educator. With a budding career recognized by Standard Bank & ConcertsSA, & academic recognition from Fulbright, Rhodes Investec & Golden Key, I’ve been the grateful recipient of needs-based funding for almost the entirety of my Bachelor of Arts & Honours degrees.

I have since accumulated several years of freelance classical, operatic & collaborative performance work, as well as extensive multi-genre vocal coaching experience. Before sharing details of my proposed course, I thought it fitting to furnish you all with details of my academic & professional life & aspirations.

Having been a chorister throughout Junior & Senior School at The Wykeham Collegiate, university voice lessons were an exciting space in which my breath & voice developed rapidly. I relished the technical demands & emotive & dramatic opportunities encompassed by Opera. What inspired me most to pursue this art form was the potency of character development afforded to particularly female leads.

During my third year at Rhodes University, my sponsors Douglas Bullis & Elysoun Ross prompted me to examine popularized repertoire for concert programmes, observing how few works by female composers featured on curricula, stages & competitions. I therefore staged A Feather on the Breath of God (2017). Amongst other items of “standard repertoire”, I & violist Lizzie Rennie performed five works by female composers Rebecca Clarke & Hildegard von Bingen. The audience was enthralled, many expressing a wish to hear more compositions by women.

In my Honours year, I returned to the Grahamstown National Arts Festival with a revamped programme comprising ten female composers, spanning 700 years of music history. All four shows were sold out & well-reviewed. I based my Research Paper on this production, using it as a case study to interrogate the degree to which the compositions of women were studied at South African tertiary institutions. My findings confirmed that championing this underrepresented & underperformed music would be part of my life’s work.

In January 2021, funded by ConcertsSA, I launched an inter-provincial collaborative eConcert-documentary, Herstory, which championed 15 female Western composers past & present, international & local. Screened on the 2021 Bowed Electrons Festival & Symposium, Director Theo Herbst lauded it as “inspiring & important work”. Subsequent funding has enabled me to produce worksheets & enhance the diversity of instrument & performer within this resource which, to date, members of the public, two schools & one university have purchased.

I applied for & was offered a place for an MEd with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2020 & 2021, as well as a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching & Learning with The Guildhall School of Music. Both fully supported my research interest in how best to address gender imbalance in Classical music performance & education. Owing to a lack of funding & Covid19 rearing it's head, I sadly had to decline these offers. The pandemic did, however, show me the potential of technology to provide practitioners with an international audience and qualification; a major future-focus of my proposed Masters Degree with the Open University UK.

My freelance career as a school vocal coach & opera singer has been transformative. I’ve used my practice to afford all voices the space to navigate what it means to be socially-aware & develop a strong & healthy voice. This uniquely open Masters would explore how other international practitioners & educators-in-training practice their craft & conduct ethical, inclusive research, using digital mediums.

As a student, & now as a practicing professional opera singer & vocal coach, I have seen the qualitative difference in stage & music work between practitioners who are technically proficient versus those that focus on delivering their repertoire with both technical proficiency & performative passion. My zest for mentoring & developing others has seen me work with a variety of individuals, from a variety of cultures & ages. I have garnered 4 years of formal Juniour & High School music teaching hours, taught students while I myself was studying at Rhodes University for a minimum of 40 hours, & have similar experience teaching students whom I tutor independently at my home / online.

My operatic & performance craft requires that I be perpetually in-training & practice, honing both my voice & stagecraft as well as the methods I use to pass that knowledge on to others. I have accumulated an extensive portfolio of collaborative projects. In addition to 12+ concerts of my own curation, my most notable performance engagements to date were to sing the Soprano role for PAMS annual performance of Handel's Messiah in 2019, and as Guest Soprano at Her Royal Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Celebrations at The Royal Show KZN in 2022. Having emigrated to The Republic of Ireland in January 2023, I am currently enjoying a different kind of role, as Solo & Ensemble Singer at Bunratty Castle Medieval Banquets. In addition to vocally coaching online, I've applied to work with an incredible organization that guarantees access to quality music education for all in The Republic; not just those residing in well-equipped city centres.

I am as passionate a teacher as I am a performer, which is why my eye was drawn to the Open MA in Music & Digital Humanities. As a Performing Teacher with a portfolio career, I feel passionately about honing my teaching craft just as much as my personal artistry. What first drew me to this Open Masters of the Arts degree was how it enables it's students to pay-per-module, custom-build their degree, & work whilst studying. There are few of us who can afford to do otherwise. The supportive, future-focused lens with which the establishment frames its educational responsibility & curriculum is one that I greatly admire. In pursuing this (my final) degree, I would gain professional skillsets in the process of conducting music-based research, ethics & inclusivity in the classroom, and the use of digital humanities in pursuit of an inclusive & geography-defying creative space. This Masters would enable me to integrate my passion for performance with my belief in access to quality music performance & education for all. I would relish the opportunity to learn from my fellow international students & to share the techniques that I have gained from my university education & freelance work in South Africa & The Republic of Ireland.

 

I am hungry to become a specialist in music-making, music-performing, & music-teaching; & my research assures me that the Open University UK is the digital place in which I am meant to pursue this final step in my music education.

Please help me to make this dream a reality, by contributing to the costs of my degree.

The first module of the MA in Music costs GBP2360, and can be read about here:

https://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/qualifications/f32

The second & final module of the MA in Music involves a dissertation, costs GBP4720, and can be read about here:

https://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/modules/a874#:~:text=MA%20Music%20part%202,of%20case%2Dstudy%20research%20projects.

I have been sponsored 90% of my fees by The Open University UK for Module Two. This is in recognition of hard work & significant financial hardship. I therefore only need to fund £500 of £4960.