Guildhall School of Music and Drama  The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a conservatoire and drama school located in the City of London, United Kingdom. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz along with drama and technical theatre arts. The school is a leading international conservatoire with students from over seventy countries. It has one of the most prestigious performing arts programmes in the world, having been ranked the number one U.K. conservatoire in the 2019 Guardian league tables for music and as the sixth university in the world for performing arts in the 2020 QS World University Rankings. Based within the heart of the Barbican Centre in the City of London, the school currently numbers just over 1000 students, approximately 800 of whom are music students and 200 on the drama and technical theatre programmes. The school is a member of Conservatoires UK, the European Association of Conservatoires and the Federation of Drama Schools. It also has formed a creative alliance with its neighbours, the Barbican Centre and the London Symphony Orchestra. Notable alumni of the school include: Sir Bryn Terfel, Sir James Galway, Daniel Craig and Ewan McGregor. The Guildhall School of Music first opened its doors on 27 September 1880, housed in a disused warehouse in the City of London. With 64 part-time students, it was the first municipal music college in Great Britain. The school quickly outgrew its first home, however, and in 1887 it moved to new premises in John Carpenter Street in a complex of educational buildings built by the Corporation of London to house it and the City's two state schools. The new building was completed by 9 December 1886 and the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Reginald Hanson, attended the opening ceremony. Teaching continued under the first principal of the school, Thomas Henry Weist Hill, who eventually had some ninety teaching staff. The new site, designed by the architect Sir Horace Jones, comprised a common room for professors and 45 studios, each surrounded by a one-foot thick layer of concrete to "deaden the sound". Each room contained both a grand piano and an upright piano. Additionally, there was an organ room and a "practice" room, in reality a small concert hall which was used for orchestral and choir rehearsals. The practice room was also the venue for the fortnightly school concerts  Initially, all tuition was on a part-time basis, but full-time courses were introduced to meet demand in 1920.