The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, London UK. The college offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western classical music including performance, theory, history, conducting, and composition, and serves as a center for research in musicology, performance practice, and music psychology. The college has numerous links with other educational colleges around the world located in Sydney, Singapore, the US, and throughout Europe.

The Royal College of Music first started using video collaboration technologies back in 2003, primarily using video to connect to the US and other parts of the world for master classes.

Matt Parkin, Head of Studios, Royal College of Music believes "Polycom video solutions are uniquely suited to distance education – and music education, in particular – because of groundbreaking technology like Music Mode".

In addition to the day-to-day use of video in masterclasses and auditions, the students, now fully accepting of the use of video in performance, decided to take things to the next level through "The Infinite Bridge" project. The Infinite Bridge is a theatrical show that tells the story of Talia, a girl who dreams, through visual poetry and specially composed music and choreography, combined with state-of-the-art technology. The piece explores the original narrative by award-winning writer Peter Cox.

The idea for The Infinite Bridge was created by two Master Students at the college when they discovered a shared ambition to explore a new form of performance and storytelling. Their idea was to allow musicians and dancers to ”converse” using digital technologies on stage to reveal a multi-layered narrative to the audience. This groundbreaking, cross-disciplinary show aimed to defy physical distance and extend beyond commonly accepted concepts of theatre production, live performance, and stagecraft.

The show included four live video streams from different cities throughout Europe, powered by Polycom video-collaboration solutions, including dancers in MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona), musicians in the Sibelius Academy (SibA) in Helsinki playing traditional Finnish instruments, and a brass player at the Royal Danish Academy of Music (Copenhagen).

All of them interacted with the performers and visuals on stage and were accompanied by a live orchestra at the Royal College of Music in London. With six months to prepare and only time for three full rehearsals, the use of video was not only essential in the preparation of the event but also played a critical part in the actual show itself.

"We felt we could take the risk with the use of technology within the performance - as we are a College and open to experimenting. On the night the quality was excellent; it was seamless, and the performance was a resounding success. The Nordic instruments, which came over Music Mode via the Polycom link, made it very special and plausible and is something that using other technologies otherwise would not have been possible" Matt Parkin, RCM.

"The Royal College of Music are doing some really exciting work at the very borders of traditional music-collaboration technology", says Jeff Rodman, a founder of Polycom. "We are thrilled to be involved in initiatives such as these, setting the tone of how music technologies are evolving and pushing the boundaries of education and collaboration. It really shows us what music education in the future could and likely will look like".