Every Candlebark student is a musician.

Music is taught by specialist teachers from Prep, with regular opportunities to perform in front of large and small audiences. Students may choose to join one of the school’s many groups or ensembles, including the string ensemble, several choirs, and the celebrated ‘ska band’. In recent years, students have formed independent rock bands that have played at professional venues.

Much has been written about the vital importance of music in child development. It assists with memory, discipline, patience, and early language development. The temporal lobe of the brain is used for language, including foreign languages, and also when learning, playing and appreciating music. Interestingly, we are all born with more neurons than we actually need. Typically by the age of 8, our brains do a major neuron dump, removing any neurons perceived as unnecessary, which is why it’s easier to teach language and music to younger children. The young brain exposed to music education becomes wired for it.

Of course, music is much more than a neuron-firing stimulus. In his book How Music Works, David Byrne of Talking Heads fame described music as ephemeral in essence. He says ‘You can’t touch music – it exists only at the moment it is being apprehended – and yet it can profoundly alter how we view the world and our place in it.’ But Byrne also talks about more concrete things, things we can see and touch that shape the state that music leaves us in – the place we hear it, who we are with, who’s playing it to us and what is created when we share this experience. Like food, music is a fundamental connector, uniting human beings across differences in age, language, background, and worldview.