The Quad recently checked in with Music Director Zach Redler about happenings in the music department.

Settling into their second year at Dublin, Mx Redler has begun to shape a music curriculum that is sensitive to the unique challenges and opportunities of operating as a small department within an intentionally small learning community. Curriculum development begins as a series of basic questions such as “how can students be playing instruments?” and “how can students be singing during the day, if they want to?” It’s these simple questions that inform the courses and extracurricular opportunities offered by the department. Mx Redler’s goal at every turn is to make music accessible to students.  

“My whole thing–I hope it comes across in any class I teach–is that students should leave here with a greater sense and ability to relate with music, whether that be listening to music with a theoretical and analytical ear or listening to music having now seen how it's produced on a computer.”

Part of this aim involves building music literacy along vocal and instrumental tracks through a variety of course work. Students are in good hands along these lines, with Mx Redler’s vast knowledge base and experience teaching and creating music as a resource. Prior to joining Dublin’s faculty, they spent fifteen years as an instructor at New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts. 

“If there are students who want to make their life a conservatory, and there are a couple that are thinking in those terms, then there's space for that.

To Mx Redler’s mind, however, there’s more to making music accessible than teaching the hard skills required to create and analyze music at a high level. Accessibility also requires creating a variety of spaces and situations for students to engage with music across their varying interests and levels of competency and comfortability. Some students will be drawn to chamber music, whereas others will be taken by the articulations of electronic synths and the process of creating music digitally. All of this finds encouragement in Dublin School’s music department. 

This fall, there are a number of exciting music offerings.

Students in Chamber Ensemble spend time pursuing practicing their own instruments while also working as a group to prepare arrangements of “Sleigh Ride” and “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies,” which they will perform on marimba at Celebration of Light this December. 

Chorus now meets during the academic day. It’s a relatively small group, meaning plenty of time for more detailed voice work, composition and theory, along with focused ear training. 

Molly F. ‘26 is co-teaching a course on electronic music production, which has been very popular with students. 

And then there’s the Advanced Music Theory crowd, made up of curious students and also those who are intent on pursuing advanced study in musicianship. 
  
Beyond creating space and guidance for music exploration, making music accessible also involves getting students to relate music to their own lives and then to broader social entanglements. This is where music becomes meaningful. In course work, students are often asked to connect music to different aspects of their identity, and in one exercise develop “identity maps” where they graft music (song, genre, artist, or otherwise) onto elements of their identity in a sometimes wacky visualization. At the level of society, there’s an emphasis on understanding music as a form of cultural production that can act on and change the world. One recent example of this would be something like “Swiftonomics,” a coinage which points to the economic impact of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, which spawned a welcomed swell in consumer spending and injected billions of dollars into cities around the U.S..

Outside of the school, interested students are able to perform as part of the Monadnock Valley Music Festival, a thirteen-highschool consortium that brings students together for choral and instrumental performances. For Dublin students who might not otherwise have the experience of participating in a full size chorus or concert band, this is an exciting opportunity!