The Thomas Hardye School has a thriving and dynamic music department offering outstanding musical provision both inside and outside of the classroom. The department has two music ICT suites offering professional standard digital audio workstation and notation software, a large rehearsal room, four practice rooms and a dedicated recording studio. The school boasts a newly refurbished theatre for concerts and productions and has close links with Dorchester Arts with which it shares this space. Each week we are visited by around twenty peripatetic instrumental and vocal teachers, offering lessons on a comprehensive range of instruments. Students are able to partake in thirteen weekly music ensembles including an orchestra, concert band, big band, rock groups, pop choir, classical choir, chapel choir and a range of smaller ensembles for flutes, clarinets, saxophones, brass, strings and percussion. We offer excellent performance opporunities including our annual fundraisers, concerts at the Hardye Theatre, Weymouth Pavilion, Dorchester Arts Centre as well as choral evensongs at locations such as Bath Abbey, Westminster Abbey, Winchester Catherdral and St Paul's Cathedral. We often collaborate with the local community and have strong links with DASP Music, local choirs and orchestras, Dorcester Arts, Dorset Music Service, Keep 106 Radio and the Dorset Museum. We have traditionally taken our larger ensembles on a biennial tour of a European country and the alternating year, perform a full musical. Within the curriculum we offer Music GCSE as well as Music and Music Technology A Level. A high percentage of our A Level students go on to study at the country's top performance colleges and universities. Our overriding intent is to give all students the opportunity to experience rich and varied musical experiences in their time at the Thomas Hardye School. This is not only through introducing them to a broad repertoire of music in timetabled lessons, but also through an extensive co-curricular programme of activities. Our curriculum and co-curriculum is designed to introduce them to the incredible range of music from the Western Classical tradition, as well as popular music and music from around the world. We aim to open their eyes to the role and benefits of performing arts locally and nationally and embed a life-long love of listening, learning, and making music.
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