Music at Burnie 

Term 4 has been a busy time for our musicians at Burnie Campus!

After a really solid year of learning, our Year 5/6 Marimba Ensemble hit the ground running, participating in a new festival for NW Tasmanian schools called “Marimba Magic”. I created this festival based on my years of experience with Marimba Mania, a Hobart festival involving hundreds of students in southern Tasmanian schools each year.  For the inaugural event, there were five schools participating, including Leighland – both Burnie & Ulverstone Campuses, Cooee Primary School, Hillcrest Primary School & Geneva Christian College.  Students were excited to come together with students from other schools, who had all been learning the same concert repertoire, and work together to make magic happen. 

Upon arrival at Camp Clayton, students helped set up all of our instruments, and then we began our rehearsal.  We really enjoyed the Camp Clayton space, where students also enjoyed some free time and a pizza dinner before commencing our evening concert for families and friends.  We had a huge LCS turnout – thanks everybody! The concert went really well, and it was wonderful to have such a huge audience.  Thank you all for supporting us in this way – I know the students really enjoyed the experience and loved being able to share their hard work with you all.  After such a successful first event, we are excited to continue our involvement in this non-competitive, fun, inspirational event in future years.

A few weeks later, Burnie Campus enjoyed an afternoon of music at school with a Music Assembly.  This Assembly featured our Marimba Ensemble, playing six of their favourite pieces, our four recorder groups, including students across Years 1-4, and also an item from our combined Y 5/6 classes, who also played a Marimba piece.  I think the audience enjoyed listening as much as we all enjoyed playing.

Marimbas and xylophones are such fun instruments to play – very quick and easy to learn how to make a good sound, and so accessible to all.  Seeing our students develop over the course of this year has been wonderful – they have really become very highly skilled.  Research shows that learning a musical instrument, with regular sessions over a long period of time, benefits children in so many ways – including Language Acquisition, Memory Capacity, Attention Skills, Numeracy Skills, Reading Skills, Student Resilience, Working Memory and Auditory Processing.  Music stimulates both sides of the brain, and researchers have said it is like watching fireworks going off inside our brains when this is activated.  What a wonderfully creative God we have to create all of this in us and for us – not to mention the benefits to our wellbeing and social connectivity when making music with others.

I look forward to finishing the year well as we continue to make music together!

Sharee Haberle

Music Specialist Teacher