Fred Binley (Music, 2003, Cartmel) has a relationship with his work as Head of UK Student Recruitment at Lancaster that could be compared with one of the pieces of music he performs in his parallel career as a freelance jazz pianist. There’s a level of familiarity, an underlying rhythm, some recurring themes but plenty of room for improvisation.

He loves it. Working in a team of 16 colleagues, in what he calls “a very competitive market place” his approach is clearly working. At a time when most UK universities are on a recruitment low, Lancaster is, according to the latest figures, seeing an 14% increase in UK undergraduate applicants, compared with a national average increase of only 0.2%.

Part of his success may be that, in his words ‘Lancaster gets into your blood’. In the past 20 years, he has graduated from the university, worked there, left it to work at two other universities, and has recently returned with a sense of coming home.

It’s not what he had planned when he applied to Lancaster. Brought up in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Fred wanted to be a music teacher and was already an accomplished violinist and pianist. Lancaster at that time had a highly regarded music department headed by Haydn expert Professor Denis McCaldin with Professor Roger Bray.

“What made it so wonderful studying music at Lancaster was the sheer amount of music-making there was on campus,” he enthuses. He played in the University Symphony and the Chamber Orchestras, as well as the many ensembles that came his way.

In his first week he joined both the music and theatre societies and performed in the ULMS freshers’ concert. He went on to join the Big Band run by his wife to be Rachel. They met in a book queue at Waterstones on campus in his second year.

In the music department, he liked and admired Professors McCaldin and Bray for their academic rigour, their warmth and friendliness. He also slipped into life in the north of England so seamlessly, that he is unsurprised by his return to Lancaster in 2023 after around a decade at Southampton (Schools and Colleges Liaison Officer) and Bangor Universities (UK Regional Recruitment Officer).

He still buzzes as he talks about the breadth of academic opportunities open to him, from pre-classical music to 21st century serial music. Fred loved his studying and quickly felt at ease studying old notations as part of Early Music. He also remembers enthusiasm for Mozart operas and early 20th-century French music by the group calling themselves ‘Les Six’.

At Lancaster, he developed his love of jazz and is proud to remember his final year recital featuring his jazz trio, with him on piano, and two friends on double bass and drum. His keyboard skills landed him a role throughout his time at Lancaster with the LU Theatre Group, playing for ‘West Side Story’, ‘Threepenny Opera’, ‘Pirates of Penzance’ and ‘Guys and Dolls’, on top of holding down two part-time paid jobs in the Sugarhouse and South End Stores.

His horizons widened further thanks to a vacation opportunity to do a vocational music teaching exchange with a school near New York. His final dissertation was on music therapy, which he considered as a career.

Here he reflects on his sadness at the closure of Lancaster’s music department in 2015: “Music is one of the liberal arts,” he says. “It is such an important subject as pretty much everyone is touched by it.”

Although he mourns the loss of the music department for what it gave the University, he points out the breadth of music-making opportunities currently available for musical students studying other subjects. Lancaster claims to have the largest student-led music society in England. Music groups of all descriptions flourish as well.

Fred’s intention to go into some kind of teaching or therapeutic role was thwarted soon after his graduation, by the appearance of a job within the university as part of a team running creative art workshops in schools, so he ended up working in the Volunteering Unit for the Student Union for a year.

This put him in a prime position when another post came up promoting the university in schools, based in the Lancaster University Student Recruitment Office and eventually he became Head of UK Student Recruitment and Outreach. He broadened his experience in recruitment posts at Southampton and Bangor Universities between 2013 and 2022, before seizing the opportunity to return to Lancaster, in his current position.

“You could say there’s a link between music and recruitment, “he says. “There’s a performance element to recruitment and there’s always a place for jazz hands!”

As a Gemini, he confesses to having a ‘portfolio career and a portfolio personality’ which keeps him constantly busy. Alongside the day job, he’s in constant demand as a pianist including workshops at a local stage school, playing for weddings and other celebrations, and regular spots at hotels in Cumbria.

So how did his undergraduate years at Lancaster shape him? “It gave me so many experiences - people I met and people I’m in touch with. It also gave me a love of learning. It cemented for me how important education is and how many doors it opens and unlocks. it also taught me to look at things from many different perspectives.”