Music 2020 - At Home Learning and performance

MUSIC 2020 - AT HOME LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE OPPORTUNITIES

GRANTLEY SUTCH

CO-DIRECTOR OF COCURRICULAR MUSIC AND HEAD OF BANDS 2020, like any other year, began with lessons, rehearsals, camps, concerts and tours designed to engaged students and entertain our families. Then the world was hit by the global pandemic COVID-19. This quickly shut down all plans and staff rallied to creating a new way of learning, interacting and performing. Here are a few of the projects that were developed by the dedicated and talented Music Department.

Lessons

Isolation at home brought a new challenge to the Music Department. How to teach music online? Zoom was easily adapted for the online classroom, however teaching instrumental and voice lessons online posed a slightly more challenging task. CoDirectors spent several days working with the technology to develop a way that oneon-one lessons could be taught effectively. After substantial modification to Zoom and a steep learning curve for all, online lessons began. Despite some initial trepidation most took to the new way of working with great ease. Many teachers commented on how student musical development began to blossom in this new environment. Students became more organised, self-reliant and time efficient.

Ensembles

Unfortunately, the technology does not exist for large groups of musicians to play together online at the same time; latency or internet lag prevents an ensemble from playing at the same time together. Conductors began online chat groups to keep the students engaged with trivia and instruction for COVID-19 performances. This social interaction was vital to maintain the ensemble culture and worked well as a check-in during the isolation period. ANZAC Day was the first opportunity for some of our musicians to perform. What started with a few trumpet players preparing to play the Last Post at dawn soon turned into a national movement #LightUptheDawn. Mr Sutch lead the charge by posting his performance on the College Facebook page along with a compilation of performances from the band program musicians.

Following the success of these performances, Mr Deacon began to investigate the concept of the @Home Performance. After much research and advice from friends at the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, he developed a workable @Home Performance solution. Sixty plus individual audio and video parts were recorded using mobile phones, then painstakingly aligned, edited and mastered to create one cohesive ensemble video. This took around three weeks to produce the final product, culminating in several videos being released by the String Department, Senior Stage Band, Symphonic Winds and Saints & Singers.

Whilst in isolation, these videos helped keep our musicians engaged in a collaborative and educational project with a high-quality outcome. The College community also looked forward to our weekly musical releases.

On return to campus, Chorale recorded their COVID-Safe rendition of Gloria by John Rutter, learnt entirely online. A professional Brass and Percussion Ensemble were engaged along with professional audio and video recording engineers to capture the performance in the Chapel.

Rehearsals

Upon returning from isolation, our ensemble rehearsal schedule was completely revamped to allow students to come together in spaces that made it possible to socially distance. For some ensembles this meant breaking into two smaller ensembles and engaging an additional conductor. Hand sanitisation, spraying of chairs and stands and social distancing became the 'new norm'. Students took these

measures in their stride as it allowed them to come together and make music for the first time in a long while.

Concerts

After several months without a live performance, this new environment required us to become more creative and provide alternative performance opportunities.

The Performer of the Year Concerto and Recital Final, went ahead with a great deal of coordination and logistical organisation. A select group of musicians formed the socially-distanced orchestra, allowing our soloists to perform their concerts as intended. The Auditorium was opened to a small but appreciative audience, whilst the rest of our community were able to view the performance via livestream.

With the continued threat of COVID-19 and strict social-distancing rules in effect, the Music Department produced a series of performance videos in lieu of Term 3 concerts. All ensembles produced video recordings of their repertoire in a concert style environment and shared them on Firefly stpeters.fireflycloud.net.au/music/term-3performances-2020. A huge thank you to the Music Administration team for their efforts producing these amazing videos.

COVID-19 has certainly provided the Music Department with many challenges. However, during these difficult times we have witnessed incredible kindness, generosity and goodwill from all. Staff have gone out of their way to put in an exorbitant number of additional hours to make these projects viable. Students have shown incredible resilience and dedication to their craft and to their ensembles. This sense of teamwork and collaboration has only made us stronger and brought us closer together. 2020 has truly shown us what it means to be part of the St Peters Music Family.