Why Study Music?
Musical life at King's is great fun. It is an important part of every day life for many pupils. There are opportunities for everyone to get involved in the many varied musical activities, to whatever level they want, but importantly, King's musicians love performing and have a broad experience of every musical style; they may not like it all, but they appreciate how it's put together and what impact music can have on us all.
What's On Offer?
There is as much music being taught, rehearsed and performed as could be imagined. In a normal week, if there is such a thing, the chapel choir could be in chapel rehearsing for the weekly service or Choral Evensong in a cathedral, the wind band, jazz bands, string orchestra and symphony orchestra all have rehearsals in preparation for the many concerts that are performed in various venues around the school, and various rock, pop, indie, metal and fusion bands are using the recording studio to lay down their latest tracks.
Concerts, Groups and Orchestras
There are concerts of all sorts of music taking place in school throughout the year, in the music school Octagon, the Woodard Room, the theatre or the chapel. Each acoustic complements the music performed, which ranges from full orchestral works with choir to intimate solos.
Regular Octagon concerts give performers of all standards the chance to gain confidence in performance in a really supportive atmosphere which everyone enjoys, including the performers. Orchestra, string orchestra and wind band all have their own programmes of material that are presented in larger concert venues, and rock and pop musicians also have several concerts to demonstrate their skills with full lighting and sound rigs.
String quartets, jazz combos, flute trios and saxophone groups all contribute to a thriving chamber music scene, and there are plenty of ad hoc groups that get together for various projects.
Performances
Tours to other venues at home and abroad contribute to the varied musical life of King's; the choir has toured to Venice and Barcelona where they sang in cathedrals and various other magnificent churches; the jazz band have, for many years, visited prep schools throughout the region and toured further afield to places such as Jersey and Barbados.
Facilities
The music department is open all day long and consists of practice and teaching rooms, a recording studio, a recital room equipped with a fine new Yamaha C3 grand piano, and several computer rooms that allow access to the departmental sound library and various musical software packages. The chapel has a fine two-manual tracker action organ, a Yamaha C7 grand piano and a marvellous acoustic. A superb Yamaha C5 grand piano has been installed in the Woodard Room. An iMac suite of computers enable pupils to produce top quality music using the very latest software and realise how exciting creating your own music can be.