Dr Aleksander Szram SFHEA is Director of Music at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, having held previous roles as Programme Leader of the BMus and Programme Leader of Creative Music Making, a blended learning course created in collaboration with the Open University.  He is a Reader in Performance Studies and a Senior Teaching Fellow, acting as institutional lead for Research and supervising a number of PhDs in creative practice and pedagogy.  His research specialisms are critical pedagogy, technology-enhanced learning, and performance.

 

As a council member of MusicHE, Aleks has been involved in recent cross-institutional campaigns to safeguard the future of music at UK conservatoires and universities.  He is a QAA performing arts subject specialist assessor and has been external examiner at several higher education providers across the world. He has written several articles and a book chapter on blended learning and critical pedagogy and acts as an external advisor for BIMM. 

 

As a performer, Aleks specialises in performing music of the 20th and 21st Centuries and has released several albums of contemporary repertoire on the Prima Facie record label, including the Piano Concerto by Daryl Runswick, Inner Landscapes (Douglas Finch), A Land so Luminous (Kenneth Hesketh), and the album Aztec Dances with the recorder player Jill Kemp. He has recorded for Nimbus with the flautist Wissam Boustany, and given premieres of works by Frederic Rzewski, Dai Fujikura, Haris Kittos, Edward Gregson, Nicola LeFanu, Sam Hayden and David Bedford, among others.

 

As pianist in the ensemble Gemini, he has recorded five albums with Métier, including works by Jonathan Harvey, Sadie Harrison, Huw Watkins, Philip Grange, and the first recording of Mandala 3 by David Lumsdaine. As well as Gemini, Aleks works with Lontano, rarescale and the Continuum Ensemble. He has performed in more than forty countries over six continents,