Romy Summers

I graduated in 2004 and wanted to apply my Music with English degree to something relevant and applied to many record labels.

I enjoyed my degree very much and it was at Brunel that I did a placement at Jazzwise Magazine which encouraged my knowledge of jazz even further. The performance elements of the degree also helped my confidence and allowed me the ability to grow as a performer and to go onto hosting a monthly evening at the Vortex jazz club. Brunel set me up with skills in English and Music, to allow me to work in a multitude of roles, across the Arts industry.

The music industry is precarious and highly competitive, and I knew I would need to get work experience before even being noticed by the bigger companies. Having emailed over 30 independent record labels I ended up doing work experience for an independent jazz label, Babel, whilst doing sales on the side, to gain some sort of wage. I continued to apply to other organisations and eventually received a call back from Universal Music asking me in for an interview. A space had arisen at Decca International for a paid internship and the HR lady had remembered that I did both classical and jazz at Brunel and so was interested in meeting me. This post at Decca was in the international marketing department which allowed me to put into practice my English degree skills (writing press releases and so forth) and my Music degree skills, as I was promoting and marketing classical and jazz artists. My degree at Brunel covered both classical and jazz which was very beneficial, as it helped me obtain such a good internship at Universal. They liked the fact I had knowledge in both genres of music.

After the internship I went back to the previous independent jazz label, where I did freelance press and promotion for them and the Vortex jazz club, (where I have been running a successful monthly open mic for over 6 years). Whilst writing more and more press releases and promoting numerous jazz artists, I applied for the job at Cadogan Hall. I have now been doing marketing at Cadogan Hall for the past 6 years and enjoy the venue, the team and the varied work. Marketing a variety of concerts throughout the year continues to make the role interesting and working in a rather intimate venue with a small team, one gets to experience how each area of the concert hall is run.