A pianist who would eventually return to her roots to fuse Bollywood with Beethoven. A violinist who earned a scholarship to a world-class conservatoire, and now shares her love for South Indian music both in the UK and around the world. A Ukrainian who found community in London through a chorus ensemble, a light amidst the darkness of war. These are people who come from different backgrounds, different homes, yet they share one thing in common: Trinity Laban.
Trinity Laban is a global conservatoire for a global community. Collaborators and creators from across the world come to Southeast London for degree programmes that transcend tradition, allowing you to find your voice through the support of world-leading educators and performance opportunities. With departments in Composition, Jazz, Music Education, Popular Music, Strings, Vocal Studies, Wind, and Brass & Percussion, here’s where your future in music starts.
Check out Trinity Laban’s music programmes here.
Trinity Laban ranks #11 in the world for music, according to the QS World Universities Ranking by Subject 2025. Source: Trinity Laban
Advance your artistic future
Since she was 12 years old, Samyuktha Rajagopal has loved performing classical music on the violin, drawing from two different cultures — Western and her own, South Indian. Pursuing her Master’s in Music (MMus) at Trinity Laban as a Bagri Foundation Scholar has allowed her to bridge these two gaps and bring visibility to the artists across Asia and the diaspora.
“When I was four years old, I happened to walk into an instrument store in Singapore and that’s when I saw my first violin,” she says. “That was the day I decided to pick up the instrument. I dreamt of playing in prestigious venues like the Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall.”
Access to global performance opportunities is precisely what she’d find in the MMus programme. Completed in two years, the programme lets you specialise in one of four different pathways, including collaborative piano, composition, performance, and performer-composer — Rajagopal naturally chose violin performance. Scholarship opportunities are extensive, such as the Fulbright Trinity Laban Award covering the first year of any taught master’s in music, dance, or musical theatre.
The support from the Bagri Foundation paves the way for Rajagopal to turn her childhood dreams into a reality. In October 2023, she became part of the award-winning Meissa Trio, her favourite stage performance being at St James’s Piccadilly just a month later. She has taken the stage at the Festival de Bellerive in Geneva, Switzerland, spreading her love of South Indian classical music with a piece called “Raasa Leela,” written by her teacher’s father.
Last year, Rajagopal performed in the morning music matinee show at the Goethe-Institut in Chennai, India, titled “RASA in an encounter with Western & Indian Classical Music.”
“Rasa literally means ‘juice, essence or taste’,” she says. “This concert included both Western and South Indian classical music, allowing the audience to compare and contrast how Rasa has been explored in both styles of music, as well as the ways in which a piece’s scale may occasionally conflict or assist with the feelings it aims to evoke.”
Trinity Laban has world-class performance facilities, including a 300-seat theatre and 13 purpose-built dance studios. Source: Trinity Laban
A globalised music experience
For BMus (Hons) graduate, Harshita Parekh, the conservatoire equipped her with the skills to weave her classical training into the music she grew up with: Bollywood. It’s a full-circle moment for Parekh, who was raised in a place where studying music was often looked down upon.
“My family constantly asks: why do you play Bach and Beethoven all the time, but never play any of the tunes we know?”, says Parekh. That marked the beginning of her project, “Bach, Beethoven, and Bollywood!” — an endeavour that earned her the Trinity Laban Innovation Award 2024. She’s currently working on an arrangement of the song “Raataan Lambiyan” from the movie “Shershaah,” the title of the piece translating to “Long Nights.”
“This was one of the songs I played at the Royal London Hospital, which has a lot of patients from ethnic minority backgrounds,” she says. “No one recognised the Bach and Beethoven, but they recognised this song. People came up to me and asked lots of questions about it.”
It’s an eye-opening experience, getting to take your ideas to renowned stages and industry settings. There’s no shortage of performance opportunities at Trinity Laban, from within your programme to collaborative works with industry-leading artists. Most recently, the conservatoire partnered with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras to introduce new initiatives, masterclasses, and immersive side-by-side schemes for young musicians across the programmes.
For Dmytro Hovorov — a BA (Hons) Musical Theatre Performance student — joining the Songs for Ukraine Chorus is one of the most meaningful opportunity he’s ever crossed paths with. Established in 2023 by the Royal Opera House and the London Ukrainian community in response to Russia’s invasion, the ensemble provided a space for Ukrainians to together and bring hope amidst the war through the power of music.
“So many Ukrainians performing together — some, like me, lived here previously, some moved because of the war,” says Hovorov. “Everyone was together and working as one — collaborating, making friends, connecting. It was like being back at my homeland again.”
Ready to take the stage?
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