MUSIC

Last week we held our inaugural Music Week. Unfortunately, the latest COVID restrictions meant we could not proceed with many of our planned activities, most of which involved inviting parents to share in our wonderful music learning community on site. Nonetheless, true to form and character, our students rallied to participate in a program of in-house concerts, sharing learning experiences across a range of instruments, ensembles, staff and year groups. In fact, when approached, with short notice, and asked to share their talents with our community, our many music students responded jumped at the opportunity to perform, and I wondered if, despite the terrible toll COVID has taken on our community, our young people, more than ever, just want to play, and share, and embrace opportunities to be together and express themselves.

With great pride, I took a tally of students, staff and instruments involved who participated in performances for Music Week, and came up with this set of statistics:

We had nine performance events, 161 performers, 190 audience members (gathered in COVID safe small groups across many concerts), and 14 staff involved in preparation and supervision. Instruments played were: violin, cello, flute, clarinet, soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, trumpet, trombone, euphonium, piano, keyboard, classical guitar, contemporary (rock/pop) guitar, bass guitar and voice.

While we are proud of all of our performers, some special moments were having our Junior School instrumental soloists play for K - 2 and Little TRACers, seeing the progress of our Year 9 and 10 Elective Music students, having Year 4 come and see the Year 5/6 Band, making a Year 4 class percussion video for Year 4 parents, seeing Year 6 make solo videos of their progress on keyboard, watching the Stage Band set-up, manage, run and pack-down their own gig, and being overwhelmed by the talent of our Encore students.

Enjoy some videos of some of our performances here:

Year 10 Elective Music Student and Classical Guitarist, Trang Nguyen performs for Music Week

Year 10 Elective Music Student and Vocalist, Simran Banga performs for Music Week

Parents of performers will receive access to their child’s performance in the coming weeks.

Gallery Image — Year 4 players Gabe Coleman and Raymond Gao

Year 4 players Gabe Coleman and Raymond Gao

Year 4 student Gabe Coleman plays for Music Week while Raymond Gao looks on

Year 5 student Katelyn Miller perfoms for Kindergarten and Little TRACers in Music Week

Year 6 student Patrick Dunstan plays trumpet for Kindergarten and Little TRACers at Music Week

Year 9 student Baci Menhennet performs at the Music Week Elective Music Concert

Year 9 student Joshua Sarantakos performs at the Music Week Elective Music Concert

Year 10 Elective Music Student Simran Banga sings Back to Black in the Music Week Elective Music Concert

Year 10 student Connor Granger and Aisha Farah perform at the Music Week Elective Music Concert

Clare Brassil | Director of Music Performance