Music
Music plays a vital role in building bridges within our international community: bridges between students, between cultures, between languages, between home and school, between individual needs and group goals. BBIS has well-equipped music classrooms with a wide range of instruments, a music technology lab, private practice rooms, and several performance spaces.
Music in the Elementary, Middle and High School Curriculum
At BBIS, music is taught from Early Childhood to Grade 12 within the framework of the IB PYP, MYP, and DP. In the PYP, students are introduced to an extensive palette of skills, cultures, contexts, composition strategies, performance opportunities, and the sheer joy of making music together. They are provided with situations to be involved from an early age in the process, as well as the product, of public performance. These opportunities include concerts, musicals, operas, assemblies, and matinee recitals.
Within the MYP framework, students continue with group music-making and performing, benefitting from music as a vehicle for communicating with each other and the world. They build up a broad musical repertoire by learning part-songs and canons from different cultures and time periods. At the same time, students develop their aural perception, analysis, musical literacy, and composing skills while studying the contexts of music history and the structures of music theory. From Grade 9 on, music is an elective. Through differentiated instruction, students have the opportunity to acquire, develop, and enhance the composition and performance skills necessary to open doors to the IB Diploma Music programme.
Music as an IB Diploma Subject
The IB Diploma Music programme at BBIS is an exciting course that enables students to reach their full potential as young performers and composers and encourages the development of their analytical skills. There is a suite of computers available where students experiment with various composition programmes. Music teachers encourage students to find their own voice through their original composition work and multiple performance opportunities during the school year. Students are encouraged to listen to a wide variety of music critically and attend live performances whenever possible.
Private Music Lessons and Ensembles
BBIS supports an extensive peripatetic instrumental music programme, offering private music lessons. In addition, the Music Department at BBIS is a centre for the bi-annual Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music practical and theoretical examinations. As part of its diverse extracurricular programme, BBIS provides various vocal, instrumental, and musical theatre activities. Students and staff interact in many of these activities, developing a safe environment for taking risks as well as creating a meaningful sense of community at BBIS.
Brent Lund Bruning
Head of Performing Arts
