Concert Program

Winter Concert 2027
Thursday, January 21, 2027, 6:30PM Start Time
West Meadows Baptist Church

6:30PM - Prayer and Treaty 6 Land Acknowledgement

Concert program TBD.

Concert Program Archive

Concert Attendance Information

While we understand how busy family schedules can be, it is important to understand that successful school concerts rely on your child's attendance if they are enrolled in band. Below are reasons as to why it is important that your child is present and performing at school concerts.

Point 1: Music is a performance-based course. The most important part of the Instrumental Music curriculum involves student public performance. This is a part of the curriculum that cannot be taught, provided, or experienced during the school day. Due to the unique nature of concert performances, the exact same educational condition cannot be recreated at a future time for an accurate assessment of the student’s true abilities to perform. In other words, a student playing the concert AFTER the performance CAN measure their ability to play correct notes and rhythms but is otherwise useless.

The student misses out on the most important aspects of a concert performance, including but not limited to balance, blend, intonation, adjustment to an audience, handling of nervousness/anxiety, adjusting to the unique concert facility, and the ability to adjust in response to various mistakes made across the ensemble.

Point 2: PERFORMANCES ARE EXAMS. This is the means with which we have music teachers measure and evaluate the group performance class. If we as music educators compromise this requirement, it merely serves to chip away at the importance of not only the individual but the worthiness of our content area.

Teachers want each performance to be at its best; failure to insist on full attendance hampers the ability of the entire group. It also makes for easy perception that it is only “extra-curricular” and not really that important. Extracurricular applies to those activities not taught during the school day – such as clubs and sporting activities.

Point 3: Music classes are not traditional classes. In most regular classrooms, a student’s ability to perform, as well as the success of the overall class performance, is not usually damaged by a single student absence. In fact, a better student-teacher ratio exists if fewer students are in the classroom.

In music ensembles however, a single absence impairs the other students’ ability, morale, and group reputation. When only one person is missing it does affect balance, blend, intonation and technical proficiency. In some cases, when one person is missing, it means that a critical part is not covered, which was otherwise covered during the rehearsal process. This means that other students may be more likely to make mistakes during the concert performance due to that part not being covered.

To preserve the quality of the performance, the morale of the entire ensemble, and the dignity and integrity of the educational values, attendance must be required.

Point 4: Absences hurt group morale. If a student is absent without cause and no penalty is given, morale and dedication of the other ensemble members will decrease. This, of course, leads to many other problems including more absenteeism. This is essentially the fuel that serves to irreparably damage the school music program and diminishes the quality of music programming overall.