This week I had the pleasure of attending our annual Spring Concert. It was a delight to hear from 63 musicians across the School. I’d like to share with you the brief words I shared:

It is so important and so precious to be able to come together to celebrate the many hours of rehearsal, gentle encouragement, dedication and joy that has gone into preparing for the outstanding performances we enjoy tonight.

Within my family context, I am known as the ‘tech-head’. I’m the one that people turn to when they can’t hear their iPhone. Or the bluetooth thingy is not connecting, or the whatsimy is not loading, or which shmoigy is for what? And how come the printer is still not working?

I’m embarrassed to admit though that despite my prowess in this space, I have my own tech issue that I can’t resolve well. It’s a storage one and it is probably shared by most of the parents in this room. See, two of my kids are musos and so my phone is chock full of videos of their many many performances over the years. I am perpetually receiving helpful messages from Apple that I’m out of space and offering me to pay my way out of the problem. Well I don’t want to get into the iCloud data debt spiral, but I don’t want to delete them. So I have to play a delicate balancing act of offloading and reloading apps any time that Apple decides I need to update my phone. 

This is all worth it because I get to trace something so impactful in watching the development of my kids through their relationship with music.

From their earlier flawed but incredibly cute renditions to the layered mature and sophisticated performances from later years, I can trace the development of their confidence, their fluency and their capacity to inhabit a different space. 

It is sometimes hard to notice their improvement, performance by performance but watching this video timeline, I realise that they are not just learning to play pieces, they are unlocking another language and learning about their own forms of expression. 

It is apparent that with drumsticks, guitar or microphone in hand, they come alive in a way that I just do not see elsewhere.

Our school has forged a reputation for supporting the development of musicians and I know that this is something that changes the way that our students think, and experience their world. 

Given the enormous advantages afforded to students who undertake a music education it fills me with such pride to see so many of our students thriving in their individual lessons, ensembles and further study. 

Our music program has multiple goals: to infuse a love of music for all who participate; to encourage our students to have a go at pushing themselves and to find individual pathways for those with a unique passion and nurture that too.

Our students are so lucky to have the incredible team of educators that we have here and I would like to take this moment to thank them. 

Shabbat Shalom,
Marc Light