To prepare for upcoming winter music concerts in December, students in every grade at MCDS are rehearsing everything from rhythm exercises to complex orchestral pieces through the schools’ music departments.

Since MCDS is a pre-K through 12 school, our music program encompasses a wide variety of topics, skills and contexts. This year, students in third and fourth grades are learning how to write rhythmic counting and read music from the grand staff (a system with both treble and bass clefs), according to Danika Rzentkowski, their music teacher. Meanwhile, the high school choir is delving into folk music and its history, as reported by their director, Genevieve Welch. The middle school band director, Kevin Acuña, writes that students in grades five through eight are learning “aural discrimination of pitch, time and harmony.”

With the upcoming winter concerts, each of the many ensembles has been preparing pieces to showcase the skills they have learned so far this year. The high school ensembles will perform pieces including “The Wellerman,” and  “Auld Lang Syne,” in choir;  “Letter from Sado,” by Jodie Blackshaw, and “Bambuco,” by Victoriano Valencia, in band; and “Waltz No. 2,” by Dimitri Shostakovich, and “Four Royal Dances,” by Eric Ewazen, in orchestra. 

Our music program has already celebrated a success this year with the grandparents’ day concert, which was a collaboration from multiple grades. Musicians in orchestra, band, and lower school, middle school and high school choirs performed together, “A Million Dreams,” by Benk Pasek and Justin Paul, from the movie, “The Greatest Showman.” 

Behind the scenes, music department teachers are constantly working hard to improve the musical education of their students. Rzenkowski reported that her third and fourth-grade classes, “Are always working hard to incorporate PYP into our music classroom,” referring to the International Baccalaureate primary years programme.

Similarly, Acuña wrote, “We’re currently doing some internal updates to the curriculum,” to include the band’s five-year plan. A part of this plan is taking into account the band’s current instruments and resources to create the ideal program for the students.