At ANAM we hold that it takes a village to grow a musician.
This belief nicely illustrates a point of difference between ANAM and the traditional European conservatoire approach to training musicians. That model places a musician alone in a studio, in an intense unquestioning relationship with a ‘master’, preparing for a solitary life of competitions and auditions, and not much beyond that; a world where one doesn’t have ‘colleagues’ so much as ‘competitors; where playing ‘with’ others is a distraction; a world where a commitment to an orchestral career is looked on somewhat dubiously; a life devoted to teaching or to community or creative leadership as something of a failure.
There, or perhaps then, the prominent place of the artform in the national cultural conversation was not in question. Concerts started at 8:00pm and the hall was full; the repertoire as familiar as the furniture; the creative, physical or emotional well-being of those performing was no-one’s concern; the future – aka the funding – was secure, the subscription base signed up for life, and the evening’s final cadence a perfect one.
This is not our world.
And this is not the world for which ANAM’s musicians are bound. That world, for all its lack of recognition and certainty, is muchricher and diverse; more unpredictable and exciting; full of pitfalls, yes, but also of potential and opportunities.
Time in the studio, of course, is a given. Technical refinement is never finished: mastery of the craft after all is what provides our musicians with their voice. The question, however, is to what end?
And so, the ANAM village.
The belief that music is both ‘sound created’ and ‘sound heard’ sits at the centre of ANAM’s world. We hold that a performance that does not unfold before a broad community of listeners – before the members of its village – is not a performance at all but simply a rehearsal.
Illuminated by their generous music-making, the village that enfolds each of our musicians – whether it be to train them, or to nurture them in discussions on physical and mental wellbeing, or by turning up to listen, donate, advocate, inspire, challenge – is warm and expansive. It’s also cacophonous, challenging, unsettling, busy, precarious, exhausting, and oftentimes something of a struggle. It is also the more exhilarating for being so.
This bustling and noisy village is united in a single shared purpose of ensuring that the music to be enjoyed by the country for the next 30 years is as rich as that heard in the last 30.
In 2026 to mark ANAM’s 30th year of creating musicians, we are gathering together 30 of our villagers to tell their ANAM stories – one story for each year that ANAM has been creating its own story – that together express the flavour and texture of village life over the past three decades.
These 30 tales will be scattered across the year like so many notes, captured in print, on our social media channels, in conversations, on our website, at concerts, in foyers and at special events.
We invite you to listen out for our storytellers and their stories throughout 2026.
Visit our 30 stories page to find out more