Music

The music program at SAS provides opportunities for students to perform vocally and instrumentally while becoming proficient in theory, sight reading, and music appreciation.

Middle school music classes help students learn to sight-sing, read rhythms, have correct vocal production to maximize their abilities, study music theory, and how to be a member of an ensemble. Students will learn key and time signatures as well as musical vocabulary. The sixth and seventh grades sing a variety of secular and sacred repertoire in two and three part harmony. Each section of eighth grade comprises a hand bell choir. This is a year long adventure in sight reading, technique, and ensemble playing.

Upper School students may take choral or instrumental classes and songwriting, music production, and recording classes or Afternoon Programs, as well as participate in varied special performances throughout the year.

Private lessons are readily available for those who wish to take voice, piano, percussion, strings, winds, or brass. Creative Expression assemblies and Open Mic Nights afford chances for musicians to perform works of their own choosing for a wonderfully receptive audience. SAS students play with the Sewanee Symphony Orchestra which gives two performances a year and rehearses weekly throughout the school year. Transportation is provided for private lessons as well as for orchestra rehearsals.

All music students participate in two yearly concerts in McCrory Hall for the Performing Arts and are encouraged to be a part of the annual musical. These performances are well attended by parents, faculty, and the Sewanee community.

Vocal ensemble is by far my favorite class at SAS. There is a supportive, creative, and tremendously fun environment and the students always feel right at home. Being in the ensemble has helped me to develop close friendships and has made me a more confident and outgoing person.

As I watched you sing two of my very favorite songs by two of the most remarkable musical talents of our time last night, I was overcome with joy. I had come to watch my sixth grader sing, and she was awesome. Then I watched as each age group went in succession, with me imagining my little girl getting to be a part of each one as the years roll by. I was reminded by your performance how uniquely special SAS is in uncountable ways, how much my daughter and her mom and I have to look forward to, how it is one of the very few places in the world that when I step onto the campus I feel like myself, and how great performances like yours can move me and touch me in such a special way. Thank you!