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Benslow Music

Benslow Music offers residential and day music courses, chamber concerts and talks at its beautiful purpose-built campus in Hitchin, Herts.

The Benslow bees and hives in our beautiful gardens

Residential and day courses for non-professional musicians

Whether your musical taste is for classical, jazz, popular, or folk, Benslow Music has a music course to suit you.

Throughout the year expert tutors lead friendly, supportive residential and day courses or give lively talks. There is something for every level from near-beginner to advanced, and we regularly welcome guests from their teens to their nineties. Our beautifully cooked food will sustain your energies and our friendly staff will do all they can to make you feel welcome.

Well-equipped and easily accessible,  our campus in Hitchin, Herts is just a thirty-minute train ride from London.

More information

Benslow Music, the Hitchin-based centre for short residential music courses for non-professional musicians, has been in the business of  teaching music for more than eighty years, since its inception in 1929 as the first branch of the Rural Music Schools Association.  The RMSA and Benslow music have been associated with many distinguished musicians: Sir Adrian Boult, Yehudi Menuhin, Michael Tippett,  Ralph Vaughan Williams,  Imogen Holst, and now Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen’s Music, have all involved themselves in some way or other with their important work.

Nowadays, Benslow Music offers its clients an unparalleled package. Our wide range of courses covers all standards and most instruments.  We offer throughout the year, both during the week and at weekends, courses based on folk, jazz, and Western Classical traditions and more, all delivered by expert teachers and/or performers, including many world-famous names.

We make sure that you are taken good care of in every way, with a comfortable bedroom, excellent food (and plenty of it), a beautifully landscaped garden and an open-minded and relaxed style of teaching designed to bring out the best in you.  Each course becomes an instant family, with students and tutors communicating as equals and with no sense of competition except with oneself.

We welcome as our guests people from all walks of life and of all ages, as long as you are able to participate fully in your chosen course or, in the case of under 18s, as long as you and we are fully confident that adequate safeguards are in place.   We pride ourselves on a mix of generations.

The atmosphere at Benslow Music is uniquely nurturing, homely and truly inspiring.  There is, we believe, nowhere else quite like it anywhere in the world.  And even if you already belong to an orchestra, ensemble or choir we think we can bring an extra dimension to your musical life.

We look forward to introducing you to the Benslow Music habit.

Stephen Pettitt

Director of Music