Continuing our series on recession-era graduates, we visit one of Britain’s most famous conservatoires and meet four young musicians setting their sights on stardom

I am standing in the foyer of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama looking up at some gigantic wooden panels. On them are the names of the great and the good who have passed through this famous London conservatoire – and the gongs they received. There are the winners of the gold medal, the school’s highest honour, such as cellist Jacqueline du Pré in 1960, violinist Tasmin Little in 1986, and the world’s favourite bass baritone, Bryn Terfel, in 1989. Then there’s Beatles producer George Martin, sopranos Anne Sofie von Otter and Kate Royal, flautist James Galway and pianist Paul Lewis. All entered the Guildhall as callow students and left to become international musical celebrities.

For all the concrete-clad modernity of its architecture, the Guildhall boasts 129 years of history; today’s students can hardly avoid being intimidated, as well as inspired, by their predecessors. Yet only a tiny handful of the 250 people graduating from the Guildhall’s music courses – which cover everything from electronic music composition to jazz, trumpet playing and opera singing – will make it on to the world’s biggest stages. It’s the special cruelty of Britain’s music conservatoires: they encourage their students to reach for the stars, to dream of being, say, the next Thomas Adès, yet there’s simply no room in today’s musical world to accommodate the hundreds of hugely talented graduates who emerge from colleges every year. There’s no space in our orchestras, few vacancies in record companies, and a dearth of openings for the latest hot crop of jazz musicians.

Some make a living as freelance teachers and sometime professional players, but for many, the dream dies when the bills pile up, and other careers start to look more tempting than a life teaching overprivileged five-year-olds how to play C major scales. While it’s true that today’s marketplace is more diverse than ever – with new opportunities online, on record and on stage – this is also the most competitive environment any generation has ever faced. Factor in the economic crisis and you could say that no one’s ever had it tougher than the class of 2009.

So who are these brave wannabes? What are their dreams? And how will they avoid a career at Citibank or Sainsbury’s? Jamie McCredie, a 27-year-old from Newcastle and a guitarist on the postgraduate jazz course, isn’t blind to the challenges. “The competition out there is super tough,” he says. “You can’t think when you get to the Guildhall, ‘Aren’t I great, I got into this place.’ There’s a big mountain to climb to get good enough for the career you want.’

To walk the corridors of the Guildhall is to be confronted by a cacophony of dreams being forged. On the top floor, I can hear all of musical history. Peering through the little portholes in each door, I see a double-bass player in the thick of an intense lesson from the symphonic repertoire; a pianist hacking her way through a Beethoven sonata; and two tenors belting out Verdi arias. Down in the strip-lit basement, a string ensemble plays 17th-century English music, a guitarist stumbles through a complex riff, and the machines of the electronic music department hum with computerised fantasies.

Alex Maynard, a 22-year-old trumpeter from Milton Keynes, has come through this practice-room purgatory. After four years of the undergraduate course, he’s just received a first in his final recital, making him one of the stars of his instrument at the college. But his relationship with the school has been vexed. “College got in the way,” he says. “I wanted to do a lot of work outside the school, but they wouldn’t shift my commitments.” Like many conservatoire students, Maynard worked at the weekend, making “a sustainable amount” playing in a band for weddings and functions, recording computer game soundtracks, and gigging as a session musician.

Things eventually came to a head. “Last year, I was offered a gig with the BBC Big Band,” he says, referring to one of the best light music outfits in the country. “But it clashed with a college thing I had to do – playing eight bars for an off-stage band in the opera.” Given that eight bars is about 30 seconds of music, it was a choice between the chance of a lifetime and a snippet of anonymous trumpetry. “The college wouldn’t let me do the BBC gig,” says Maynard. “I was gutted. I thought, ‘It’s now or never: I either tell the Guildhall I’m leaving, or I stay and finish the degree and hopefully the professional work will come again.’”

His teacher Paul Cosh – an experienced orchestral player, like most instrumental teachers at the Guildhall – told him to get rid of the outside work, and concentrate on the degree. “After that, you can do what you want,” he told Maynard. And it worked: “My finals were only a week ago – and all the work has come back as word has got round that I’ve finished my degree.”

Maynard’s degree seems to matter less than the contacts he’s been able to build up at the Guildhall. The world of trumpet-playing is a small cabal; get in with the right people and it can set you up for life. Much more than the degree course (Maynard says he wasn’t taught much about music that he didn’t already know), it’s the way Guildhall meshes instrumentalists into the professional world that makes it special.

The college is proud of its links with the outside world. Jono Buchanan, who teaches electronic music, even goes as far as to say: “Our head of department says that the ultimate success for an electronic music student is that they don’t finish the course: that they’ve become so much in demand from the outside world they have to leave before they complete their studies.”

Mica Levi’s story is a good example. Aged 22 and from Guildford, she’s the singer with Micachu and the Shapes, who released an album on Rough Trade earlier this year. The three band members met at the Guildhall, and they have created one of the most quirkily distinctive sounds in pop. As the Guardian music blog put it: “Micachu’s mashed-up DIY sound is pure aural alchemy.”

Having completed three years of composition, Levi’s not going back for the final year. “Because I’ve got work as a musician – which is ridiculously rare anyway – it seemed a shame not to take advantage of it,” she says. “And studying composition is not something you have to do when you’re young. There’s so much to learn, and you’re part of a tradition that’s so ancient. When I’m older, I can come back to it. The band’s success might not last beyond this year – so I thought, ‘I might as well enjoy it.’”

Levi played two sets at Glastonbury this year, and will work on a new album in the autumn. Does she really think it could all be over so soon? “The pop music industry is a nightmare,” she says. “It’s so fickle. But we’re doing all right now. We’re just about supporting ourselves, just about breaking even, and that to me is success, because I’m able to do exactly what I want as a musician without needing any other support.”

Richard Baker, joint head of composition, defines the department’s ethos as: “We don’t want anyone to feel obliged to write any particular kind of music. We want them to be free to experiment and find their own way.” In the case of Levi, who was working on pop songs rather than symphonies, they agreed it was in her best interests to follow her career. “I was really supported,” she says. “The teachers are really aware of everything that’s going on musically beyond western classical music. So I had an education through learning about all of that, and I was encouraged to indulge in the music I wanted to write.”

Levi’s story is one that all Guildhall graduates want to emulate: getting paid to make the music they want to make. You can sense it in the commitment and intensity of 28-year-old soprano Rhona McKail’s performance as the female lead in a rarely heard comic opera by Bohuslav MartinuËš. It’s her final performance on the opera course, and one she hopes will be the catalyst for a soprano career. “I know I’ve got something valuable to offer,” says McKail, who’s from Prestwick in Ayrshire. “It’s just a question of where it’s going to go. I’m really happy to be leaving Guildhall now. After this term and these performances, I feel prepared. I’ve learned so much in terms of my confidence – in thinking yes, I’m worth it.”

In the 14 years since he graduated from the Guildhall, singer Toby Spence hasn’t stopped working, going on to become one of the world’s most sought-after tenors. Why shouldn’t it all work out for McKail? The odds may be stacked against her, and most of the college’s students. But if they can make their time in the dream factory work for them, anything is possible. “When you get here,” says McKail, “you look round at everyone else and think, ‘I’m crap!’ But it’s all come together in the last few months. Four years on, I now feel that my voice is ready.”

Continuing our series on recession-era graduates, we visit one of Britain’s most famous conservatoires and meet four young musicians setting their sights on stardom

I am standing in the foyer of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama looking up at some gigantic wooden panels. On them are the names of the great and the good who have passed through this famous London conservatoire – and the gongs they received. There are the winners of the gold medal, the school’s highest honour, such as cellist Jacqueline du Pré in 1960, violinist Tasmin Little in 1986, and the world’s favourite bass baritone, Bryn Terfel, in 1989. Then there’s Beatles producer George Martin, sopranos Anne Sofie von Otter and Kate Royal, flautist James Galway and pianist Paul Lewis. All entered the Guildhall as callow students and left to become international musical celebrities.

For all the concrete-clad modernity of its architecture, the Guildhall boasts 129 years of history; today’s students can hardly avoid being intimidated, as well as inspired, by their predecessors. Yet only a tiny handful of the 250 people graduating from the Guildhall’s music courses – which cover everything from electronic music composition to jazz, trumpet playing and opera singing – will make it on to the world’s biggest stages. It’s the special cruelty of Britain’s music conservatoires: they encourage their students to reach for the stars, to dream of being, say, the next Thomas Adès, yet there’s simply no room in today’s musical world to accommodate the hundreds of hugely talented graduates who emerge from colleges every year. There’s no space in our orchestras, few vacancies in record companies, and a dearth of openings for the latest hot crop of jazz musicians.

Some make a living as freelance teachers and sometime professional players, but for many, the dream dies when the bills pile up, and other careers start to look more tempting than a life teaching overprivileged five-year-olds how to play C major scales. While it’s true that today’s marketplace is more diverse than ever – with new opportunities online, on record and on stage – this is also the most competitive environment any generation has ever faced. Factor in the economic crisis and you could say that no one’s ever had it tougher than the class of 2009.

So who are these brave wannabes? What are their dreams? And how will they avoid a career at Citibank or Sainsbury’s? Jamie McCredie, a 27-year-old from Newcastle and a guitarist on the postgraduate jazz course, isn’t blind to the challenges. “The competition out there is super tough,” he says. “You can’t think when you get to the Guildhall, ‘Aren’t I great, I got into this place.’ There’s a big mountain to climb to get good enough for the career you want.’

To walk the corridors of the Guildhall is to be confronted by a cacophony of dreams being forged. On the top floor, I can hear all of musical history. Peering through the little portholes in each door, I see a double-bass player in the thick of an intense lesson from the symphonic repertoire; a pianist hacking her way through a Beethoven sonata; and two tenors belting out Verdi arias. Down in the strip-lit basement, a string ensemble plays 17th-century English music, a guitarist stumbles through a complex riff, and the machines of the electronic music department hum with computerised fantasies.

Alex Maynard, a 22-year-old trumpeter from Milton Keynes, has come through this practice-room purgatory. After four years of the undergraduate course, he’s just received a first in his final recital, making him one of the stars of his instrument at the college. But his relationship with the school has been vexed. “College got in the way,” he says. “I wanted to do a lot of work outside the school, but they wouldn’t shift my commitments.” Like many conservatoire students, Maynard worked at the weekend, making “a sustainable amount” playing in a band for weddings and functions, recording computer game soundtracks, and gigging as a session musician.

Things eventually came to a head. “Last year, I was offered a gig with the BBC Big Band,” he says, referring to one of the best light music outfits in the country. “But it clashed with a college thing I had to do – playing eight bars for an off-stage band in the opera.” Given that eight bars is about 30 seconds of music, it was a choice between the chance of a lifetime and a snippet of anonymous trumpetry. “The college wouldn’t let me do the BBC gig,” says Maynard. “I was gutted. I thought, ‘It’s now or never: I either tell the Guildhall I’m leaving, or I stay and finish the degree and hopefully the professional work will come again.’”

His teacher Paul Cosh – an experienced orchestral player, like most instrumental teachers at the Guildhall – told him to get rid of the outside work, and concentrate on the degree. “After that, you can do what you want,” he told Maynard. And it worked: “My finals were only a week ago – and all the work has come back as word has got round that I’ve finished my degree.”

Maynard’s degree seems to matter less than the contacts he’s been able to build up at the Guildhall. The world of trumpet-playing is a small cabal; get in with the right people and it can set you up for life. Much more than the degree course (Maynard says he wasn’t taught much about music that he didn’t already know), it’s the way Guildhall meshes instrumentalists into the professional world that makes it special.

The college is proud of its links with the outside world. Jono Buchanan, who teaches electronic music, even goes as far as to say: “Our head of department says that the ultimate success for an electronic music student is that they don’t finish the course: that they’ve become so much in demand from the outside world they have to leave before they complete their studies.”

Mica Levi’s story is a good example. Aged 22 and from Guildford, she’s the singer with Micachu and the Shapes, who released an album on Rough Trade earlier this year. The three band members met at the Guildhall, and they have created one of the most quirkily distinctive sounds in pop. As the Guardian music blog put it: “Micachu’s mashed-up DIY sound is pure aural alchemy.”

Having completed three years of composition, Levi’s not going back for the final year. “Because I’ve got work as a musician – which is ridiculously rare anyway – it seemed a shame not to take advantage of it,” she says. “And studying composition is not something you have to do when you’re young. There’s so much to learn, and you’re part of a tradition that’s so ancient. When I’m older, I can come back to it. The band’s success might not last beyond this year – so I thought, ‘I might as well enjoy it.’”

Levi played two sets at Glastonbury this year, and will work on a new album in the autumn. Does she really think it could all be over so soon? “The pop music industry is a nightmare,” she says. “It’s so fickle. But we’re doing all right now. We’re just about supporting ourselves, just about breaking even, and that to me is success, because I’m able to do exactly what I want as a musician without needing any other support.”

Richard Baker, joint head of composition, defines the department’s ethos as: “We don’t want anyone to feel obliged to write any particular kind of music. We want them to be free to experiment and find their own way.” In the case of Levi, who was working on pop songs rather than symphonies, they agreed it was in her best interests to follow her career. “I was really supported,” she says. “The teachers are really aware of everything that’s going on musically beyond western classical music. So I had an education through learning about all of that, and I was encouraged to indulge in the music I wanted to write.”

Levi’s story is one that all Guildhall graduates want to emulate: getting paid to make the music they want to make. You can sense it in the commitment and intensity of 28-year-old soprano Rhona McKail’s performance as the female lead in a rarely heard comic opera by Bohuslav MartinuËš. It’s her final performance on the opera course, and one she hopes will be the catalyst for a soprano career. “I know I’ve got something valuable to offer,” says McKail, who’s from Prestwick in Ayrshire. “It’s just a question of where it’s going to go. I’m really happy to be leaving Guildhall now. After this term and these performances, I feel prepared. I’ve learned so much in terms of my confidence – in thinking yes, I’m worth it.”

In the 14 years since he graduated from the Guildhall, singer Toby Spence hasn’t stopped working, going on to become one of the world’s most sought-after tenors. Why shouldn’t it all work out for McKail? The odds may be stacked against her, and most of the college’s students. But if they can make their time in the dream factory work for them, anything is possible. “When you get here,” says McKail, “you look round at everyone else and think, ‘I’m crap!’ But it’s all come together in the last few months. Four years on, I now feel that my voice is ready.”

Continuing our series on recession-era graduates, we visit one of Britain’s most famous conservatoires and meet four young musicians setting their sights on stardom

I am standing in the foyer of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama looking up at some gigantic wooden panels. On them are the names of the great and the good who have passed through this famous London conservatoire – and the gongs they received. There are the winners of the gold medal, the school’s highest honour, such as cellist Jacqueline du Pré in 1960, violinist Tasmin Little in 1986, and the world’s favourite bass baritone, Bryn Terfel, in 1989. Then there’s Beatles producer George Martin, sopranos Anne Sofie von Otter and Kate Royal, flautist James Galway and pianist Paul Lewis. All entered the Guildhall as callow students and left to become international musical celebrities.

For all the concrete-clad modernity of its architecture, the Guildhall boasts 129 years of history; today’s students can hardly avoid being intimidated, as well as inspired, by their predecessors. Yet only a tiny handful of the 250 people graduating from the Guildhall’s music courses – which cover everything from electronic music composition to jazz, trumpet playing and opera singing – will make it on to the world’s biggest stages. It’s the special cruelty of Britain’s music conservatoires: they encourage their students to reach for the stars, to dream of being, say, the next Thomas Adès, yet there’s simply no room in today’s musical world to accommodate the hundreds of hugely talented graduates who emerge from colleges every year. There’s no space in our orchestras, few vacancies in record companies, and a dearth of openings for the latest hot crop of jazz musicians.

Some make a living as freelance teachers and sometime professional players, but for many, the dream dies when the bills pile up, and other careers start to look more tempting than a life teaching overprivileged five-year-olds how to play C major scales. While it’s true that today’s marketplace is more diverse than ever – with new opportunities online, on record and on stage – this is also the most competitive environment any generation has ever faced. Factor in the economic crisis and you could say that no one’s ever had it tougher than the class of 2009.

So who are these brave wannabes? What are their dreams? And how will they avoid a career at Citibank or Sainsbury’s? Jamie McCredie, a 27-year-old from Newcastle and a guitarist on the postgraduate jazz course, isn’t blind to the challenges. “The competition out there is super tough,” he says. “You can’t think when you get to the Guildhall, ‘Aren’t I great, I got into this place.’ There’s a big mountain to climb to get good enough for the career you want.’

To walk the corridors of the Guildhall is to be confronted by a cacophony of dreams being forged. On the top floor, I can hear all of musical history. Peering through the little portholes in each door, I see a double-bass player in the thick of an intense lesson from the symphonic repertoire; a pianist hacking her way through a Beethoven sonata; and two tenors belting out Verdi arias. Down in the strip-lit basement, a string ensemble plays 17th-century English music, a guitarist stumbles through a complex riff, and the machines of the electronic music department hum with computerised fantasies.

Alex Maynard, a 22-year-old trumpeter from Milton Keynes, has come through this practice-room purgatory. After four years of the undergraduate course, he’s just received a first in his final recital, making him one of the stars of his instrument at the college. But his relationship with the school has been vexed. “College got in the way,” he says. “I wanted to do a lot of work outside the school, but they wouldn’t shift my commitments.” Like many conservatoire students, Maynard worked at the weekend, making “a sustainable amount” playing in a band for weddings and functions, recording computer game soundtracks, and gigging as a session musician.

Things eventually came to a head. “Last year, I was offered a gig with the BBC Big Band,” he says, referring to one of the best light music outfits in the country. “But it clashed with a college thing I had to do – playing eight bars for an off-stage band in the opera.” Given that eight bars is about 30 seconds of music, it was a choice between the chance of a lifetime and a snippet of anonymous trumpetry. “The college wouldn’t let me do the BBC gig,” says Maynard. “I was gutted. I thought, ‘It’s now or never: I either tell the Guildhall I’m leaving, or I stay and finish the degree and hopefully the professional work will come again.’”

His teacher Paul Cosh – an experienced orchestral player, like most instrumental teachers at the Guildhall – told him to get rid of the outside work, and concentrate on the degree. “After that, you can do what you want,” he told Maynard. And it worked: “My finals were only a week ago – and all the work has come back as word has got round that I’ve finished my degree.”

Maynard’s degree seems to matter less than the contacts he’s been able to build up at the Guildhall. The world of trumpet-playing is a small cabal; get in with the right people and it can set you up for life. Much more than the degree course (Maynard says he wasn’t taught much about music that he didn’t already know), it’s the way Guildhall meshes instrumentalists into the professional world that makes it special.

The college is proud of its links with the outside world. Jono Buchanan, who teaches electronic music, even goes as far as to say: “Our head of department says that the ultimate success for an electronic music student is that they don’t finish the course: that they’ve become so much in demand from the outside world they have to leave before they complete their studies.”

Mica Levi’s story is a good example. Aged 22 and from Guildford, she’s the singer with Micachu and the Shapes, who released an album on Rough Trade earlier this year. The three band members met at the Guildhall, and they have created one of the most quirkily distinctive sounds in pop. As the Guardian music blog put it: “Micachu’s mashed-up DIY sound is pure aural alchemy.”

Having completed three years of composition, Levi’s not going back for the final year. “Because I’ve got work as a musician – which is ridiculously rare anyway – it seemed a shame not to take advantage of it,” she says. “And studying composition is not something you have to do when you’re young. There’s so much to learn, and you’re part of a tradition that’s so ancient. When I’m older, I can come back to it. The band’s success might not last beyond this year – so I thought, ‘I might as well enjoy it.’”

Levi played two sets at Glastonbury this year, and will work on a new album in the autumn. Does she really think it could all be over so soon? “The pop music industry is a nightmare,” she says. “It’s so fickle. But we’re doing all right now. We’re just about supporting ourselves, just about breaking even, and that to me is success, because I’m able to do exactly what I want as a musician without needing any other support.”

Richard Baker, joint head of composition, defines the department’s ethos as: “We don’t want anyone to feel obliged to write any particular kind of music. We want them to be free to experiment and find their own way.” In the case of Levi, who was working on pop songs rather than symphonies, they agreed it was in her best interests to follow her career. “I was really supported,” she says. “The teachers are really aware of everything that’s going on musically beyond western classical music. So I had an education through learning about all of that, and I was encouraged to indulge in the music I wanted to write.”

Levi’s story is one that all Guildhall graduates want to emulate: getting paid to make the music they want to make. You can sense it in the commitment and intensity of 28-year-old soprano Rhona McKail’s performance as the female lead in a rarely heard comic opera by Bohuslav MartinuËš. It’s her final performance on the opera course, and one she hopes will be the catalyst for a soprano career. “I know I’ve got something valuable to offer,” says McKail, who’s from Prestwick in Ayrshire. “It’s just a question of where it’s going to go. I’m really happy to be leaving Guildhall now. After this term and these performances, I feel prepared. I’ve learned so much in terms of my confidence – in thinking yes, I’m worth it.”

In the 14 years since he graduated from the Guildhall, singer Toby Spence hasn’t stopped working, going on to become one of the world’s most sought-after tenors. Why shouldn’t it all work out for McKail? The odds may be stacked against her, and most of the college’s students. But if they can make their time in the dream factory work for them, anything is possible. “When you get here,” says McKail, “you look round at everyone else and think, ‘I’m crap!’ But it’s all come together in the last few months. Four years on, I now feel that my voice is ready.”

Continuing our series on recession-era graduates, we visit one of Britain’s most famous conservatoires and meet four young musicians setting their sights on stardom

I am standing in the foyer of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama looking up at some gigantic wooden panels. On them are the names of the great and the good who have passed through this famous London conservatoire – and the gongs they received. There are the winners of the gold medal, the school’s highest honour, such as cellist Jacqueline du Pré in 1960, violinist Tasmin Little in 1986, and the world’s favourite bass baritone, Bryn Terfel, in 1989. Then there’s Beatles producer George Martin, sopranos Anne Sofie von Otter and Kate Royal, flautist James Galway and pianist Paul Lewis. All entered the Guildhall as callow students and left to become international musical celebrities.

For all the concrete-clad modernity of its architecture, the Guildhall boasts 129 years of history; today’s students can hardly avoid being intimidated, as well as inspired, by their predecessors. Yet only a tiny handful of the 250 people graduating from the Guildhall’s music courses – which cover everything from electronic music composition to jazz, trumpet playing and opera singing – will make it on to the world’s biggest stages. It’s the special cruelty of Britain’s music conservatoires: they encourage their students to reach for the stars, to dream of being, say, the next Thomas Adès, yet there’s simply no room in today’s musical world to accommodate the hundreds of hugely talented graduates who emerge from colleges every year. There’s no space in our orchestras, few vacancies in record companies, and a dearth of openings for the latest hot crop of jazz musicians.

Some make a living as freelance teachers and sometime professional players, but for many, the dream dies when the bills pile up, and other careers start to look more tempting than a life teaching overprivileged five-year-olds how to play C major scales. While it’s true that today’s marketplace is more diverse than ever – with new opportunities online, on record and on stage – this is also the most competitive environment any generation has ever faced. Factor in the economic crisis and you could say that no one’s ever had it tougher than the class of 2009.

So who are these brave wannabes? What are their dreams? And how will they avoid a career at Citibank or Sainsbury’s? Jamie McCredie, a 27-year-old from Newcastle and a guitarist on the postgraduate jazz course, isn’t blind to the challenges. “The competition out there is super tough,” he says. “You can’t think when you get to the Guildhall, ‘Aren’t I great, I got into this place.’ There’s a big mountain to climb to get good enough for the career you want.’

To walk the corridors of the Guildhall is to be confronted by a cacophony of dreams being forged. On the top floor, I can hear all of musical history. Peering through the little portholes in each door, I see a double-bass player in the thick of an intense lesson from the symphonic repertoire; a pianist hacking her way through a Beethoven sonata; and two tenors belting out Verdi arias. Down in the strip-lit basement, a string ensemble plays 17th-century English music, a guitarist stumbles through a complex riff, and the machines of the electronic music department hum with computerised fantasies.

Alex Maynard, a 22-year-old trumpeter from Milton Keynes, has come through this practice-room purgatory. After four years of the undergraduate course, he’s just received a first in his final recital, making him one of the stars of his instrument at the college. But his relationship with the school has been vexed. “College got in the way,” he says. “I wanted to do a lot of work outside the school, but they wouldn’t shift my commitments.” Like many conservatoire students, Maynard worked at the weekend, making “a sustainable amount” playing in a band for weddings and functions, recording computer game soundtracks, and gigging as a session musician.

Things eventually came to a head. “Last year, I was offered a gig with the BBC Big Band,” he says, referring to one of the best light music outfits in the country. “But it clashed with a college thing I had to do – playing eight bars for an off-stage band in the opera.” Given that eight bars is about 30 seconds of music, it was a choice between the chance of a lifetime and a snippet of anonymous trumpetry. “The college wouldn’t let me do the BBC gig,” says Maynard. “I was gutted. I thought, ‘It’s now or never: I either tell the Guildhall I’m leaving, or I stay and finish the degree and hopefully the professional work will come again.’”

His teacher Paul Cosh – an experienced orchestral player, like most instrumental teachers at the Guildhall – told him to get rid of the outside work, and concentrate on the degree. “After that, you can do what you want,” he told Maynard. And it worked: “My finals were only a week ago – and all the work has come back as word has got round that I’ve finished my degree.”

Maynard’s degree seems to matter less than the contacts he’s been able to build up at the Guildhall. The world of trumpet-playing is a small cabal; get in with the right people and it can set you up for life. Much more than the degree course (Maynard says he wasn’t taught much about music that he didn’t already know), it’s the way Guildhall meshes instrumentalists into the professional world that makes it special.

The college is proud of its links with the outside world. Jono Buchanan, who teaches electronic music, even goes as far as to say: “Our head of department says that the ultimate success for an electronic music student is that they don’t finish the course: that they’ve become so much in demand from the outside world they have to leave before they complete their studies.”

Mica Levi’s story is a good example. Aged 22 and from Guildford, she’s the singer with Micachu and the Shapes, who released an album on Rough Trade earlier this year. The three band members met at the Guildhall, and they have created one of the most quirkily distinctive sounds in pop. As the Guardian music blog put it: “Micachu’s mashed-up DIY sound is pure aural alchemy.”

Having completed three years of composition, Levi’s not going back for the final year. “Because I’ve got work as a musician – which is ridiculously rare anyway – it seemed a shame not to take advantage of it,” she says. “And studying composition is not something you have to do when you’re young. There’s so much to learn, and you’re part of a tradition that’s so ancient. When I’m older, I can come back to it. The band’s success might not last beyond this year – so I thought, ‘I might as well enjoy it.’”

Levi played two sets at Glastonbury this year, and will work on a new album in the autumn. Does she really think it could all be over so soon? “The pop music industry is a nightmare,” she says. “It’s so fickle. But we’re doing all right now. We’re just about supporting ourselves, just about breaking even, and that to me is success, because I’m able to do exactly what I want as a musician without needing any other support.”

Richard Baker, joint head of composition, defines the department’s ethos as: “We don’t want anyone to feel obliged to write any particular kind of music. We want them to be free to experiment and find their own way.” In the case of Levi, who was working on pop songs rather than symphonies, they agreed it was in her best interests to follow her career. “I was really supported,” she says. “The teachers are really aware of everything that’s going on musically beyond western classical music. So I had an education through learning about all of that, and I was encouraged to indulge in the music I wanted to write.”

Levi’s story is one that all Guildhall graduates want to emulate: getting paid to make the music they want to make. You can sense it in the commitment and intensity of 28-year-old soprano Rhona McKail’s performance as the female lead in a rarely heard comic opera by Bohuslav MartinuËš. It’s her final performance on the opera course, and one she hopes will be the catalyst for a soprano career. “I know I’ve got something valuable to offer,” says McKail, who’s from Prestwick in Ayrshire. “It’s just a question of where it’s going to go. I’m really happy to be leaving Guildhall now. After this term and these performances, I feel prepared. I’ve learned so much in terms of my confidence – in thinking yes, I’m worth it.”

In the 14 years since he graduated from the Guildhall, singer Toby Spence hasn’t stopped working, going on to become one of the world’s most sought-after tenors. Why shouldn’t it all work out for McKail? The odds may be stacked against her, and most of the college’s students. But if they can make their time in the dream factory work for them, anything is possible. “When you get here,” says McKail, “you look round at everyone else and think, ‘I’m crap!’ But it’s all come together in the last few months. Four years on, I now feel that my voice is ready.”

Continuing our series on recession-era graduates, we visit one of Britain’s most famous conservatoires and meet four young musicians setting their sights on stardom

I am standing in the foyer of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama looking up at some gigantic wooden panels. On them are the names of the great and the good who have passed through this famous London conservatoire – and the gongs they received. There are the winners of the gold medal, the school’s highest honour, such as cellist Jacqueline du Pré in 1960, violinist Tasmin Little in 1986, and the world’s favourite bass baritone, Bryn Terfel, in 1989. Then there’s Beatles producer George Martin, sopranos Anne Sofie von Otter and Kate Royal, flautist James Galway and pianist Paul Lewis. All entered the Guildhall as callow students and left to become international musical celebrities.

For all the concrete-clad modernity of its architecture, the Guildhall boasts 129 years of history; today’s students can hardly avoid being intimidated, as well as inspired, by their predecessors. Yet only a tiny handful of the 250 people graduating from the Guildhall’s music courses – which cover everything from electronic music composition to jazz, trumpet playing and opera singing – will make it on to the world’s biggest stages. It’s the special cruelty of Britain’s music conservatoires: they encourage their students to reach for the stars, to dream of being, say, the next Thomas Adès, yet there’s simply no room in today’s musical world to accommodate the hundreds of hugely talented graduates who emerge from colleges every year. There’s no space in our orchestras, few vacancies in record companies, and a dearth of openings for the latest hot crop of jazz musicians.

Some make a living as freelance teachers and sometime professional players, but for many, the dream dies when the bills pile up, and other careers start to look more tempting than a life teaching overprivileged five-year-olds how to play C major scales. While it’s true that today’s marketplace is more diverse than ever – with new opportunities online, on record and on stage – this is also the most competitive environment any generation has ever faced. Factor in the economic crisis and you could say that no one’s ever had it tougher than the class of 2009.

So who are these brave wannabes? What are their dreams? And how will they avoid a career at Citibank or Sainsbury’s? Jamie McCredie, a 27-year-old from Newcastle and a guitarist on the postgraduate jazz course, isn’t blind to the challenges. “The competition out there is super tough,” he says. “You can’t think when you get to the Guildhall, ‘Aren’t I great, I got into this place.’ There’s a big mountain to climb to get good enough for the career you want.’

To walk the corridors of the Guildhall is to be confronted by a cacophony of dreams being forged. On the top floor, I can hear all of musical history. Peering through the little portholes in each door, I see a double-bass player in the thick of an intense lesson from the symphonic repertoire; a pianist hacking her way through a Beethoven sonata; and two tenors belting out Verdi arias. Down in the strip-lit basement, a string ensemble plays 17th-century English music, a guitarist stumbles through a complex riff, and the machines of the electronic music department hum with computerised fantasies.

Alex Maynard, a 22-year-old trumpeter from Milton Keynes, has come through this practice-room purgatory. After four years of the undergraduate course, he’s just received a first in his final recital, making him one of the stars of his instrument at the college. But his relationship with the school has been vexed. “College got in the way,” he says. “I wanted to do a lot of work outside the school, but they wouldn’t shift my commitments.” Like many conservatoire students, Maynard worked at the weekend, making “a sustainable amount” playing in a band for weddings and functions, recording computer game soundtracks, and gigging as a session musician.

Things eventually came to a head. “Last year, I was offered a gig with the BBC Big Band,” he says, referring to one of the best light music outfits in the country. “But it clashed with a college thing I had to do – playing eight bars for an off-stage band in the opera.” Given that eight bars is about 30 seconds of music, it was a choice between the chance of a lifetime and a snippet of anonymous trumpetry. “The college wouldn’t let me do the BBC gig,” says Maynard. “I was gutted. I thought, ‘It’s now or never: I either tell the Guildhall I’m leaving, or I stay and finish the degree and hopefully the professional work will come again.’”

His teacher Paul Cosh – an experienced orchestral player, like most instrumental teachers at the Guildhall – told him to get rid of the outside work, and concentrate on the degree. “After that, you can do what you want,” he told Maynard. And it worked: “My finals were only a week ago – and all the work has come back as word has got round that I’ve finished my degree.”

Maynard’s degree seems to matter less than the contacts he’s been able to build up at the Guildhall. The world of trumpet-playing is a small cabal; get in with the right people and it can set you up for life. Much more than the degree course (Maynard says he wasn’t taught much about music that he didn’t already know), it’s the way Guildhall meshes instrumentalists into the professional world that makes it special.

The college is proud of its links with the outside world. Jono Buchanan, who teaches electronic music, even goes as far as to say: “Our head of department says that the ultimate success for an electronic music student is that they don’t finish the course: that they’ve become so much in demand from the outside world they have to leave before they complete their studies.”

Mica Levi’s story is a good example. Aged 22 and from Guildford, she’s the singer with Micachu and the Shapes, who released an album on Rough Trade earlier this year. The three band members met at the Guildhall, and they have created one of the most quirkily distinctive sounds in pop. As the Guardian music blog put it: “Micachu’s mashed-up DIY sound is pure aural alchemy.”

Having completed three years of composition, Levi’s not going back for the final year. “Because I’ve got work as a musician – which is ridiculously rare anyway – it seemed a shame not to take advantage of it,” she says. “And studying composition is not something you have to do when you’re young. There’s so much to learn, and you’re part of a tradition that’s so ancient. When I’m older, I can come back to it. The band’s success might not last beyond this year – so I thought, ‘I might as well enjoy it.’”

Levi played two sets at Glastonbury this year, and will work on a new album in the autumn. Does she really think it could all be over so soon? “The pop music industry is a nightmare,” she says. “It’s so fickle. But we’re doing all right now. We’re just about supporting ourselves, just about breaking even, and that to me is success, because I’m able to do exactly what I want as a musician without needing any other support.”

Richard Baker, joint head of composition, defines the department’s ethos as: “We don’t want anyone to feel obliged to write any particular kind of music. We want them to be free to experiment and find their own way.” In the case of Levi, who was working on pop songs rather than symphonies, they agreed it was in her best interests to follow her career. “I was really supported,” she says. “The teachers are really aware of everything that’s going on musically beyond western classical music. So I had an education through learning about all of that, and I was encouraged to indulge in the music I wanted to write.”

Levi’s story is one that all Guildhall graduates want to emulate: getting paid to make the music they want to make. You can sense it in the commitment and intensity of 28-year-old soprano Rhona McKail’s performance as the female lead in a rarely heard comic opera by Bohuslav MartinuËš. It’s her final performance on the opera course, and one she hopes will be the catalyst for a soprano career. “I know I’ve got something valuable to offer,” says McKail, who’s from Prestwick in Ayrshire. “It’s just a question of where it’s going to go. I’m really happy to be leaving Guildhall now. After this term and these performances, I feel prepared. I’ve learned so much in terms of my confidence – in thinking yes, I’m worth it.”

In the 14 years since he graduated from the Guildhall, singer Toby Spence hasn’t stopped working, going on to become one of the world’s most sought-after tenors. Why shouldn’t it all work out for McKail? The odds may be stacked against her, and most of the college’s students. But if they can make their time in the dream factory work for them, anything is possible. “When you get here,” says McKail, “you look round at everyone else and think, ‘I’m crap!’ But it’s all come together in the last few months. Four years on, I now feel that my voice is ready.”