Music students write ABRSM exam
About 230 Ghanaian music students between five and 30 years are taking part in this year’s Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) examination being held at the Music Haven, Kokomlemle, in Accra.
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The exam, which started on Tuesday, May 31, ends on Wednesday, June 15.
The ABRSM is the world’s leading provider of music exams and assessments. Each year, over 600,000 candidates take ABRSM exams in more than 90 countries around the world.
The exams and assessments offer a clear, simple framework against which to measure musical development. The board examines in both theory and practical performance.
The international examiner for Ghana this year is Joanne Wicks. Born in Reading, England, she started studying piano at seven.
After attending Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, as a first-study oboist with singing and piano as second studies, she was awarded a choral scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1987 where she achieved an MA and a postgraduate BMus.
Singing work
Joanne Wicks’ career has included music teaching, privately and in schools, as well as professional singing work.
As a full-time member of the BBC Singers from 1994 to 1998, she was involved in a number of international tours, broadcast premieres and prom concerts and often appeared as a soloist.
She is still a member of Canty, a group of four female voices and medieval harp based in Glasgow, and has also been involved with a number of music groups as a volunteer.
Married with two children, Joanne Wicks has been part of ABRSM’s examination structure since 2004.
Eden B. Takyi-Micah, the ABRSM representative in Ghana, told the Daily Graphic there had been a steady upward growth in the number of candidates sitting for the ABRSM certificates.
He, however, pointed out that though several determined students got better each year, music education still needed better attention in this country.