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SCOTLAND'S premier performing arts college, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, is planning to become an "international centre of excellence" on a par with rivals in London and New York, its new chairman said. Speaking from Berlin, where RSAMD singers were performing Handel's
Messiah with an orchestra of German music students, Iain Vallance set
out his plans for turning the college into a "world-class institution". In his first interview since taking the job, Lord Vallance spoke of how the college can use the Royal Bank of Scotland as a model. "Just as in the last ten years the RBS has established itself as a world-class financial institution, the RSAMD is on target to achieve the same kind of standing in the area of performing arts," he said. The RSAMD says the first-time collaboration with Berlin's University of the Arts - including joint concerts by the 70 undergraduate and graduate students in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Berlin and Potsdam - signals its ambition to strengthen teaching and student standards by seeking out international partnerships. The college's principal, John Wallace, said: "This is an enriching experience for the students. It is giving them an opportunity to perform on a much bigger stage. It is an opportunity to network with European institutions as well as their peers." Top executives at the RSAMD are now on a recruitment drive for international students from the US, China and Russia. The team includes new directors Sir Brian McMaster, former director of the Edinburgh International Festival, and Peter Thierfeldt, a veteran of high- profile fundraising campaigns in the arts, including a stint at the National Galleries of Scotland. On a recent trip to China, new music director James Gourlay auditioned 60 students and ten have now accepted places. He also recruited two student composers from a top US school. "One driver is to do with standards," Gourlay said. "We find that Asian students, for example, have a different work ethic than European students. That is something that rubs off." The Glasgow-based RSAMD typically has about 750 students, and there is huge demand for places. The intake is 80 per cent Scottish, but there are many foreign students in graduate programmes, such as opera. The changes will not dilute the number of Scottish students and teachers, Lord Vallance said. "If you are going to be a first-rate institution then you have to attract first-rate students and teachers internationally. The point about going international is to raise standards, to the benefit of Scottish students." Lord Vallance helped bring an impressive array of financial giants
to back the Messiah tour, including RBS - where he was a former board
member - Standard Life, Deutsche Bank and Allianz, Europe's biggest
insurer. SOME of the country's most famous acting exports attended the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. They include Robert Carlyle, who became widely known as Hamish Macbeth and had roles in Trainspotting, The Full Monty and The World is Not Enough. Other former students include Billy Boyd, who achieved stardom as Pippin in the Lord of the Rings series, Dawn Steele, Alan Cumming, Daniela Nardini, John Hannah and Ruby Wax.
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