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Upper School Instrumental Music

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Upper School Instrumental Music

The Harvard-Westlake Instrumental Music Program is a dynamic and comprehensive high school music experience offering a unique blend of jazz and classical music education. Students are immersed in a rich musical environment through a variety of performing ensembles, including Jazz Horn Section, Jazz Rhythm Section, Jazz Ensemble, Studio Jazz Band, Jazz Band and Jazz Combos, String Techniques, Symphony, Harvard-Westlake Chamber Orchestra, and AP Music Theory.

The Harvard-Westlake Instrumental Music Program is a dynamic and comprehensive high school music experience offering a unique blend of jazz and classical music education. Students are immersed in a rich musical environment through a variety of performing ensembles, including Jazz Horn Section, Jazz Rhythm Section, Jazz Ensemble, Studio Jazz Band, Jazz Band and Jazz Combos, String Techniques, Symphony, Harvard-Westlake Chamber Orchestra, and AP Music Theory. With a focus on excellence and artistic growth, students embark on domestic and international travels annually, participating in high-stakes performance opportunities that enrich their musical proficiency and cultural understanding. Through a rigorous curriculum and a commitment to musical excellence, the program fosters creativity, collaboration, and a lifelong passion for music among its participants.

Courses

Directed Study: Jazz Theory and Improvisation

Students develop fluency in the language of jazz through the study of chord–scale relationships, form, harmony, scales, and stylistic vocabulary. Students listen to and analyze recordings to identify improvisational techniques and harmonic devices used by renowned jazz musicians. Through guided instruction, transcription, and composition projects, students apply these concepts directly to their own improvisation and creative work.

Directed Study: Introduction to Music Theory

This course gives students the basic skills and knowledge required for enrollment in Honors Music Theory. It covers material such as major and minor key signatures; all forms of major and minor scales and modes; and intervals, triads, and their inversions. The curriculum is dedicated to ear training, sight singing, and dictation and includes intensive exercises for the individual and the class.

Honors Music Theory

Elements of theory, harmony, and form—including scales and keys, intervals, chords, structural analysis and manipulation of Common Practice harmony, as well as melodic and harmonic dictation—are thoroughly explored.

Music Tutorial

Each Music Tutorial offers student members of another Performing Arts course the opportunity to develop discipline-specific skills. The content is determined through individual meetings with the instructor of the tutorial and is intended to supplement and enhance other in-class instruction. Typical tutorials are undertaken in music-related areas, such as composition, arranging, counterpoint, conducting, orchestration, jazz and commercial improvisation, early music, music history, music production, and voice and instrumental study. A limited number of tutorials can be supported by the music faculty each year, and the one meeting per cycle is arranged by the instructor. Students must be capable of working independently to complete the substantial amount of work assigned.

Faculty

In Arts