CAJ has enjoyed a long history of excellence in music, being well-known and appreciated within our community and beyond. The department asserts that arts education, including music education, which gathers from and connects to learning in nearly every discipline, is of great importance in developing the whole person. We teach music not because we expect all children to major in it and not so they can relax or have fun, though these may, indeed, happen. We teach it so they can be human, so they will recognize the source of all beauty, so they will be sensitive, so they will be closer to God, so they will -- have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good -- in short, more life.

The music department uses the following acronym to guide our curriculum and the activities we pursue in and out of the classroom or rehearsal:

• M: Magnify the Lord.
• U: Use music to communicate.
• S: Serve God and others.
• I: Imitate Christ through creativity.
• C: Creatively proclaim God.

For many students, CAJ’s music department culminates in performance ensembles. These are possible because we are committed to teaching throughout the curriculum the building blocks of music reading, theory and history, and guiding students into discovering their God-given talents and honing their skills. This is all done to glorify the Lord, to reflect his beauty, and to deliver the message of his love through the medium of music.