MUSIC 2019 This year has been another wonderful success for the Music department. As we do every year, we have participated in many community performances, competitions and school events. Some new events this year were a visit from some of the tutors of Otago University’s Performing Arts Faculty. This visit gave the senior music students an opportunity to perform in a masterclass environment and receive feedback from internationally experienced performers. This was a hugely valuable tool for those students completing the performance aspect of the Music courses as they were able to use this feedback to improve their performances for assessment. We were very fortunate to have been accepted as a participant in the NZ Music Commission’s Music Mentor Program which provides a professional NZ musician to be a mentor for our students in the music class. We had APRA Silver Scroll winner Thomas Oliver spend the day with our senior students working on songwriting and discussing the ‘where to after school’ question. His experience and advice were of great value to our students and gave them more confidence in their abilities. We had many performances in the community which allowed us to demonstrate the diversity of our musical performance abilities. We took a group of senior students to perform at the Havelock North Community Centre, Coro Notabile participated in the Big Sing competition, a selection of instrumentalists and vocalists provided a lunchtime concert for Summerset in the Orchard and a number of our groups performed as part of the St Matthew’s Blossom week concert series. Our junior program in the music department focusses on the aspect of performance. To reinforce the skills required for this to develop we had a visit from Australian percussion duo ‘Kaboom’. They visited our school and performed a show for all junior music students and then held two classroom workshops. These were great interactive fun which got the students tapping, clapping and stomping. In summary, it has been another busy and rewarding year for the music department and plans are well underway for even more exciting musical events in 2020. Watch this space! Amanda Cooper
122
