2025 Term 1 Newsletter

Wednesday, March 5, 2025 by Joanne Trewick | Uncategorized

 Music With Joanne Trewick Music Studio

Term 1 Newsletter

Wow, we are already past the halfway mark of this term!

Our year has had a banging start, with so much going on in our music rooms that is exciting and wonderful.

Welcome

We have had many new families join us this term and I hope that all children are starting to feel settled and excited about the possibilities of their musical journey. We extend a very warm welcome to all new families and encourage you to get as involved as possible with home practice routines, performance opportunities and to feel comfortable asking any questions that you may have, if there is anything that you are not feeling sure about. Learning an instrument is a “Big Picture Project” not something that happens in a short timeframe, but the benefits to students are almost immediate as they create new pathways in their brain and carve out new ways of being effective learners. 

Two Learning Spaces For Us

One of the biggest changes to our music studio this year has been given the opportunity of adding the music learning space at Saint Augustine’s primary school to our schedule of after school and weekend classes. We are beyond grateful to the school for allowing us to put their space to such great use and look forward to showing our appreciation of that by respecting the safety rules in place for the school grounds outside of school hours. Please see below a letter from Saints principal Mrs Kym Bennett that details the expectations.

Dear Parents,

St Augustine's are excited to welcome all Music with Jo Trewick students to their school! Ensuring the safety and well-being of your children is our shared priority. With child safety in mind, we implement comprehensive safety protocols and maintain a low student-to-teacher ratio to ensure that every child receives the attention, instruction and care they deserve. We believe that a safe student is a happy student, and we are working together to support your child's musical educational journey every step of the way.

Because the lessons are happening on school premises and outside of school hours, the children attending lessons will be supervised in the music room at all times. Ideally parents, carers and siblings will then leave school grounds until pickup time. Students will be supervised in the Music room until the responsible adult arrives for pickup.  If leaving the school grounds is not possible or practical for the parent/carer, all children (i.e. siblings) not involved in music classes must be fully and actively supervised by their parent in the undercover area. Please be aware, Outside of School Hours Care use the playground equipment as part of their program. This means we are not able to use this equipment at any time outside of school hours.

Thank you for your understanding and your ongoing support.

Kind Regards,

Kym Bennett 
Principal 
E: kbennett@cns.catholic.edu.au

Term 1 Showcase Change of Plans

As many of you may have realised by now (since no email addressing registration or providing further details has been sent out) the Term 1 Showcase, announced as taking place on Sunday March 9 in the January newsletter - is not this weekend! This was a typo, and the event is Saturday March 29. Instead of our usual Student Showcase we are providing entertainment at the Community Bush Dance Event between 4 and 6pm. Please plan to join us if your child has a performance, or just come along to support our students and enjoy the whole event. No registration is needed for this event.

Community Bush Dance hosted by Saint Augustines

The March 29 Bush Dance event will not involve every single student, but it will involve many. If your child’s class is among those invited to perform you can expect an email with details soon. I will need a prompt reply to confirm their availability to be there. Please check your diary now to see if this date will be workable for your family. Our performances will run between 4 and 6pm. 

Term 2/3 Showcase dates

These events are optional and require registration if you wish to participate. Details will be in the next newsletter, but please save the following dates:

Term 2 Showcase is on Sunday June 8

Term 3 Showcase is on Sunday Aug 31

All students will be encouraged to register and events will start at 3pm.

For Term 2, registrations will open on Friday May 16 and close on Saturday May 31. This year I will not be able to accept late registrations so please mark your diary carefully. 

RECITAL and AWARDS Night

Mark October 18 in bold highlight on your calendar as this is the event that involves all students from all classes, and is our biggest event of the year - the Annual Recital and Awards! Your family will need the whole day free to enjoy this spectacular event, as we do a stage rehearsal in the morning and have our performance late afternoon and into the evening. Unless there are extenuating circumstances we expect attendance by all students to this event, so please make every effort to keep this date free to celebrate the musician in your family!

Professional development

Time and costs involved in the pursuit of excellence are many, but I think it is well worth it to ensure that I maintain a fresh pedagogical approach. Therefore, I am continually and actively seeking out new input, as it is very important to me to keep learning. And to keep you informed regarding this aspect of lesson preparations, I like to share my current professional development course/s in each newsletter. 

This month I have been exploring ideas around memorisation of musical works, both the benefits that can be achieved and also the blocks that some students can experience playing from memory - and how to overcome these. 

All Instrumentalists Should Sing….

Singing is so impactful to our musical education to develop our inner hearing and sense of pitch. This skill called audiation, is a skill I want for all my students! Not all of us feel comfortable singing, but I strongly encourage everyone to sing at any opportunity to help develop a sense of comfort with the sound of our own voices. Our Monday voice class still has openings, it is our lowest cost class (because I really want it to be accessible to all students) and….if your family already pays for three or more classes a week it is completely FREE! Consider now if you can make 4-4:30pm on Mondays work for the students in your family.

Term Resource Fee

As you would be aware, the resources used in lessons (subscriptions to learning platforms, streaming services, downloadable music licenses, reference copies of books, instruments, printing etc. etc.) all come with a cost. The term resource fee charged to each family once a term goes a small way towards contributing to maintaining access to these things. I always try to apply it to invoices in a month that have a smaller number of lessons due to school holidays. For Term 1 - that will be the April invoices. Term 2 doesn’t have an ideal month as May and June are both 4 active lesson weeks each, so it will be added to the May invoice. Please be assured that it is a once a term charge, not a once a month one, but at times it may occur back to back, on consecutive monthly invoices.

Staff Introductions

Most of you have had the chance to meet or work with the lovely Miss Rebekah Ives, she aides in a good number of classes throughout the week , takes some classes on her own, as well as being our licensed Kinder Beat instructor. This is Miss Rebekah’s third year as part of our teaching team and her focus is early childhood music education.

Miss Rebecca Farraway has assisted with some classes in the past but is stepping into the assistant role in more classes this year. Miss Rebecca has been in lessons with me for ten years now, is a fine pianist and holds skills across various other instruments as well, she attends Mossman High.

 

Many of you receive lesson notes each week from either Miss Rebekah or Miss Rebecca who write about our lesson for you, check your child’s practice diary and theory books, help with tuning and set up of instruments, offer extra guidance to students who may be struggling with an activity or take on other tasks that allow the class to run smoothly and for me to concentrate on delivering a fast paced and full lesson of learning.

When either of these ladies are not able to be in class, I really miss them and notice the difference. For this reason, I will be training more of our advanced students over the coming months to be available for relief work when more teacher assistants are needed to cover our classes with me. 

Also, in the pursuit of keeping my energy and focus on planning and teaching, I have employed the services of Mrs Deb Cockburn to take over some of the admin load for our studio. Here is a brief introduction from her.

Hi music students and parents, I am very pleased to be given the opportunity to help Joanne with the administrative side of her wonderful music studio and as such, provide support to her students and parents in that capacity. Over time I will be able to assist with your enquiries etc., at the moment I am learning Studio operations and working towards streamlining Studio admin processes, with the main goal of freeing up more of Joanne’s time for her passion projects, the important stuff – teaching music to your children.

Deb

Awards Since Last 2024 Newsletter

2024

Francesca Hughes - Grade 2 piano 10 pieces

Cody Hilton - 40pc guitar certificate

Haku Emmerson - 50pc piano trophy

Emma Coiutti - High Distinction PRELIMINARY GRADE PIANO EXAM

2025

Alianna Currie - 10pc piano certificate

Lennox Freitas - 20pc piano certificate

Etenia Chayenne Simon - 30pc piano medal

Bella Hawkes-Gabrielli - 20pc piano certificate

Marsden Smyth - Grade 2 piano 20 pieces

Louis Bengtsson - Preliminary Grade piano 20 pieces

Elina Bengtsson - Preliminary Grade piano 20 pieces

Neil Ekwanich - Distinction GRADE 4 PIANO EXAM

Neil Ekwanich - Credit GRADE 2 THEORY

Nakeisha Wellham - Distinction GRADE 3 PIANO EXAM

Nakeisha Wellham - Grade 3 piano 10 pieces

Aelita Moss - Distinction  GRADE 3 PIANO EXAM

Aelita Moss - Grade 3 piano 10 pieces

Saxon Keech - High Distinction GRADE 1 PIANO EXAM

Saxon Keech - Grade 1 piano 20 pieces

Kieantae Salaam - 20pc piano certificate

Cora Mountford - 40 pc piano certificate

Moses Kavanagh - Grade 1 piano 10 pieces

Olive-Litsa Kavanagh - Grade 1 piano 10 pieces

Marsden Smyth- Credit GRADE 2 PIANO EXAM

Olive- Litsa Kavanagh- Distinction GRADE 1 PIANO EXAM

Moses Kavanagh- High Disctinction GRADE 1 PIANO EXAM

Madeline Morgan- Distinction GRADE 1 PIANO EXAM

Ava Axon - Credit GRADE 1 PIANO EXAM

Aadidev Padnakad - Distinction GRADE 1 PIANO EXAM

Anastasia Frahn - Credit GRADE 4 PIANO EXAM

Aadidev Padnakad - 40pc guitar certificate

Callum Moffat - Distinction GRADE 1 PIANO EXAM