The Manchester Camerata has launched the Camerata 360° Ruth Sutton Fellowship, a year-long and paid training programme

Manchester Camerata at Stoller Hall (Photo: Robin Clewley)

The Manchester Camerata has launched the Camerata 360° Ruth Sutton Fellowship, a year-long, paid training programme which will directly address the need for recent music graduates to be given more learning opportunities within an industry under increasing threat of arts funding cuts. 

Created with the generous support of The Ruth Sutton Trust for Music, the fellowship begins in October 2023 and offers places for five recently graduating Northern based musicians, either composition students or orchestral strings, giving them hands-on work experience and training across all of the ensemble's community, outreach, performance and creative endeavours, giving an essential and broader insight into the workings of orchestral life to help enable and develop burgeoning music careers both in and outside of the concert platform.    

The Camerata 360° Ruth Sutton Fellowship has been specifically designed for newly graduating Northern based musicians – i.e. those who have graduated in the last two years and who are in or near Manchester, the Pendle area, Liverpool, Bolton, Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Huddersfield, Newcastle, Sunderland, or Middlesbrough. One of the key aims of the Fellowship is that fellows can continue their careers in the North and join Manchester Camerata’s talented pool of freelance performers and practitioners.

Jane Farnworth, daughter of Ruth Sutton, on behalf of the family comments:

"My mother Ruth was a very fine concert pianist in her earlier years and her love for music remained a passion throughout her life. In 2012, she founded the Pendle Young Musicians Bursary to give the young musicians of Pendle, a chance of gaining substantial funding to help them continue their musical studies. Ruth also developed a very close relationship with the Manchester Camerata, with both parties having immense respect for each other’s work. We are delighted to be founding the Manchester Camerata 360° Ruth Sutton Fellowship. This is a wonderful tribute to Ruth and her passion for helping young musicians. I know she would have been absolutely honoured and excited at what lies ahead."

Full details from the Manchester Camerata's website.