Before term started, I jumped on a video call with Simon Fairclough, Director of the University’s Centre for Music Performance. The CMP is a major player in the music scene here, organising dozens of events a term, supporting student societies, and running multiple classical and jazz ensembles. Given how active and integrated the organisation is, it seems surprising that it was only created in the last few years, replacing the over 150-year-old Cambridge University Music Society (CUMS) when it launched in 2022. I wanted to talk to the man at the heart of all this about his and the organisation’s background, why it was created, and the ethos shaping its work.

It turns out my questions about the Centre’s origins and Fairclough’s own professional background were more closely linked than I imagined. After graduating from Christ’s, he balanced working in management for various classical ensembles with volunteering as chair of CUMS. In that capacity he saw firsthand the limitations of the system in place at the time, and the need for a more organised, holistic approach to supporting the university’s music-making. As he told me, “for 50 years or so, the university was very reliant on two local people who worked as volunteers, essentially running university-level music through CUMS for free”. This rather ad hoc approach “made it harder than it needed to be to really take decisions that were the right thing educationally and artistically”: decisions were instead informed by affordability and volunteer manpower. After the retirement of CUMS’ star volunteers, it became evident that something more “secure and sustainable” was needed.

“It is clear that the centre has made significant inroads in unlocking the huge potential for student music-making”

And so, with Fairclough leading the way, a more permanent centre was forged, with a team of staff dedicated to supporting and organising musical life in the university. Beyond better resources, I wanted to understand how the CMP differs from its institutional predecessor. Fairclough gave me the centre’s elevator pitch, built around the cornerstones of continuing CUMS’ tradition of excellence in choral and other classical genres, whilst integrating previously lacking support for other genres and providing beginner-level classes and opportunities, in recognition of the diminished state of pre-university musical education. Just by glancing at their brochure for this term, it is clear that the centre has made significant inroads in unlocking the huge potential for student music-making, and Fairclough’s genuine excitement about the variety of activities the centre now supports was evident throughout our discussion. I also couldn’t help commenting on the fortuitous retirement of one of Cambridge’s more awkward acronyms, to which he laughed knowingly, extending sympathy to those at the music society of Bristol University.

On a more serious note, though, I was curious to hear how he felt about losing the oldest music society of its kind and the rich history of eminent musicians who came from its ranks. Perhaps unsurprisingly he didn’t see this change as a termination of CUMS, but rather a regeneration, a “new phase”. He argued that “if you look back at the times in CUMS’ history where it was most ambitious, it was where it wore its history lightly and actually was looking to the future”, from Charles Villiers Stanford conducting Tchaikovsky and Brahms against the fashions of Victorian Britain, to David Wilcox inviting Benjamin Britten to Cambridge in the post-war years. Ultimately, time will have to tell if the early 2020s establish themselves as a new chapter in this history.

“This is a place where you can come and get involved in absolutely everything”

The creation of the CMP will definitely be remembered for the explosion of opportunities for world and popular musical genres that came with it. Given Cambridge’s international reputation for choral singing and the centre’s connection to CUMS, which focused near-exclusively on Western Classical music-making, the CMP has a delicate task in avoiding either perpetuating these institutional biases or having a politicised knee-jerk reaction against them. When asked about a potential reticence to dedicate resources to choral singing, Fairclough tells me that “where it’s appropriate to do that [he] absolutely loves doing that”, citing the upcoming performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the London Philharmonic Orchestra alongside a ‘superchoir’ of Choral Award holders. At the same time, “this is a place where you can come and get involved in absolutely everything”. Fairclough sees the role of the CMP as “enabling student interests to be fulfilled” rather than to “force anyone to do any kind of music” – they simply provide the equipment, support, and expertise that was lacking in previous years, for those who want it. Flagship schemes such as the Advanced Popular Performance Scheme and beginner classes for sound engineers and instruments like guitar came out of a genuine student interest in these things, which is reflected in their oversubscription.

Throughout our discussion it became clear to me that at the heart of the CMP’s success across the last few years has been a healthy dose of ambitious and open-minded thinking from Fairclough and those around him: the pre-pandemic years seemed characterised by what music couldn’t be made at the university, and now with the institutional grounding of the new centre, far more exciting questions are being asked about what music can be made, and how to make it happen.

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