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The Biennial Concert at Hamer Hall
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In August, the School, after years of Covid-19 disruption, was thrilled to finally gather for the very special Biennial Concert at Hamer Hall. Held for the first time since 2018, musicians from across the School, and all of Middle and Senior School, joined together for a jam-packed musical program.
It is fortunate indeed for us to perform at Hamer Hall, but what makes our music program exceptional, and indeed possible, is the community in which it resides.
I am completely overwhelmed at the enormity of what we have achieved as a whole school community. Rehearsing music, in many ways, is as easy or as difficult as two things – the printed dots on the page, and the context in which the rehearsal takes place. As teachers, we can control the former, and as teachers at Camberwell Grammar, we can only be exceptionally grateful for the latter.
It is fortunate indeed for us to perform at Hamer Hall, but what makes our music program exceptional, and indeed possible, is the community in which it resides. Above all else, it is the regular time with the students, built from a strong routine of singing in the younger years, that allows our whole school to perform the way they did so brilliantly on our special night. No music program worth its salt is possible without a culture of singing and normality of participation.
Singing together brings us together as a community. It is a shared experience that not only benefits our wellbeing by lowering cortisol levels or releasing oxytocin, or improving our ability to focus, or practicing mindfulness, or activating and connecting our brains; in short, singing is good. Plain and simple. Singing is good. It is, quite simply, hard-wired into us as a species to benefit from singing together.
Groups, communities and cultures who come together in song have an enhanced ability to empathise, communicate and organise; history is full of examples from the Romans to the renaissance, to niche online communities and back to pre-historic folk songs in every culture and corner of the world. It is almost absurd that so few modern communities embrace this ancient super charger of wellbeing and connectedness in an increasingly compartmentalised and isolated society. By complete contrast, we are fortunate beyond belief to be part of a community that not only accepts music making as ‘normal’ but embraces and encourages it so wholeheartedly. As I said to the students during our morning rehearsal on concert day, it was ‘our’ concert. We achieved a wonderful thing as a community, and it is because of our community that we achieved it. And I am so, so honoured to have had the joy of standing in the middle of it all at the end of the night.
Mr Ben Bishop
Director of Music
