The Royal Academy of Music is one of the most prestigious conservatoires in the world, training generations of eminent musicians for all parts of the profession. Its alumni include Henry Wood, John Barbirolli, Myra Hess, Felicity Lott, Simon Rattle, Harrison Birtwistle, Elton John, Annie Lennox, Max Richter and Jacob Collier. Royal Academy graduates populate all the great orchestras, opera houses and musical theatre venues of the world, including the London Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera and Broadway in New York and the West End. They are players, singers, composers, conductors, curators, animateurs and teachers.

Approaching its bicentenary, the Royal Academy is Britain’s oldest conservatoire. An international organisation from its foundation, it has just completed a transformative programme of new building at the heart of its Marylebone Road site. Bright ancillary spaces, refurbished studios and two exceptional additions designed by Ian Ritchie Architects, the Susie Sainsbury Theatre and the Angela Burgess Recital Hall, have already won major national and international awards for their breath-taking designs and outstanding acoustics, ideal for talented young singers, instrumentalists and composers.

Recent decades have seen the Royal Academy extend its interests to jazz, musical theatre and vital outreach, educational and celebrated collaborative projects to foster future generations of musicians and music lovers. This book reveals how virtuoso architecture and technology have brilliantly fused the Academy’s famous Edwardian building with the modern institution’s creative values and aspirations as it moves towards its third century.