Pre-College Division

The middle and high school years are where a young musician decides what role music will play in her life. A hobby? A lifelong skill? A serious discipline? A vocation pursued at the collegiate level and beyond?

Pre-College is built for students who are taking that question seriously. The curriculum is more demanding than Foundation. The expectations are higher. The work is rigorous. These students aren't waiting to become serious musicians — they already are.

Not every Pre-College student goes on to collegiate music study. Some pursue music alongside other vocations and remain skilled lifelong musicians. Some discern that their gifts lie elsewhere and leave the Conservatory grateful for the training. Some pursue music as their primary calling and matriculate into the Conservatory's College Program or into other conservatories around the country. Pre-College makes any of these paths possible.

God and the Arts is the course in which the Conservatory's pedagogy is articulated for students at the age when they can engage it seriously. Required of all Pre-College students and taught at no additional charge, it gives the weekly technical work a larger frame.

The course examines the Christian tradition's serious engagement with beauty, performance, and the arts — drawing on Scripture, spiritual writing, the history of the Western artistic tradition, and the Conservatory's own working pedagogy. It is one of the more substantive components of the Pre-College experience, and the course most often cited by graduating students as having shaped their vocational thinking.

Pre-College is when a student's musical life begins to widen. Alongside their private instruction, students become eligible for the Conservatory's selective ensembles — Chamber Orchestra, Advanced Vocal Ensemble — and take on more varied and demanding repertoire. They also have the opportunity to audition for Packard Playhouse productions, performing alongside professional faculty on a real stage.

These experiences aren't guaranteed. Students prepare, audition, sometimes land the role and sometimes don't, and learn from both outcomes — which is exactly how working musicians operate.

Pre-College students who pursue music at the collegiate level have multiple paths. Some matriculate into the Conservatory's own College Program. Others audition for conservatories and university music programs across the country. The Conservatory's Pre-College faculty work with each family on the path that fits — including the audition preparation, repertoire selection, and portfolio development that collegiate music study requires.