We offer students in grades Pre-K through 12 both classroom music, as a part of the academic curriculum, and extracurricular opportunities to perform in a number of ensembles. Classes in general music are required for students in grades Pre-K through 9, and offered as an elective to students in grades 10 through 12. There are four full-time and three part-time music teachers at Shipley.

Students are encouraged to participate in one or more of the following ensembles:

Lower School:
Grade Level Choruses, Advanced Chorus, Recorder Ensemble, Lower School Orchestra, Beginners’ String Program, Advanced Beginners’ Ensemble, Intermediate String Ensemble

Middle School:
Grade Level Choruses, Handbell Choirs, Wind Ensemble, String Ensemble

Upper School:
Upper School Chorus, Madriguys, Madrigals, Shipley Philharmonic, String Ensemble, Jazz Band, Flute Ensemble

Cross-Divisional:
All-School Select Chorus

Recent Upper School productions have ranged in style from Kurt Weill: Berlin to Broadway to Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. This year’s offering will be Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, sung in Italian. The Middle School has recently presented Annie Get Your Gun, The Pajama Game and Annie.

We also offer a private music lesson program taught by highly qualified professional musicians from the Philadelphia area. Private instruction is available in the following areas: piano, voice, violin, viola, cello, flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, and guitar.

An important aspect of the music program is community outreach. Ensembles from Shipley perform in the community at such places as local nursing homes and churches, present annual concerts at the Martin Luther Silver Springs School, participate in the Philadelphia Revels, and have been in an arts partnership with students from Philadelphia. In addition, the select Upper School a capella groups undertook a concert tour in the former East Germany in the summer of 2000.

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