EMI Music Sound Foundation

ABRSM and PureSolo have a winner!

Remember how we told you about the great competition put on by ABRSM in collaboration with PureSolo? Well here are the results…......

ABRSM (the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) is the world’s leading authority on musical assessment, having set the standard for the past 120 years, and annually providing music exams taken by more than 640,000 children and young people, in over 90 countries.

In a unique digital initiative, ABRSM teamed up with PureSolo, the new UK-based online music recording community, to provide exam entrants the opportunity to enhance their practice by creating their own recorded tracks at home using music from Grades 1–5 of the new ABRSM Violin syllabus. This modern method of exam preparation has been available to violinists since July 2011.

The competition was on when ABRSM and PureSolo decided to give one lucky child the chance to play an original Stradivarius (one of the world’s most famous instruments) and have her music recorded in SARM Studios with a surprise visit from virtuoso violinist Nicola Benedetti – this winner just happened to be 16-year-old Laura Ayoub.
This amazing competition was to celebrate the release of the new ABRSM Violin syllabus, and the launch of the ABRSM PureSolo website - a unique online educational tool, which enables musicians to record their own versions of music from the syllabus over professionally-produced backing tracks, ensuring that budding virtuosos can practice and get note perfect.

Quoted from Benedetti regarding her experience with Laura Ayoub “I was thrilled to meet Laura Ayoub. She is a talented, wonderful young musician and it was thrilling for both of us to talk about technique and repertoire and share our experiences of studying the violin. I was extremely impressed with her commitment, hard work and dedication to the violin and I wish her the best of luck for the future”.

PureSolo’s ABRSM platform can be accessed at http://www.abrsm.org/puresolo