During the pandemic, music is vital
When the COVID-19 pandemic began to make its way to the U.S. in early March, the staff of the Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association immediately went into planning mode. How would we operate if we weren’t able to meet, learn and practice music, and rehearse for our upcoming spring performances?
In-person collaboration is vital to making music, and the prospect of not meeting in person was completely foreign to us, and to our students. Yet it became a reality in early March, when New Mexico’s government mandated that all schools must transition to an online environment.
This state of emergency, reminiscent of an outlandish sci-fi novel, rendered all events cancelled until further notice. Stay-at-home orders had everyone sheltering in place with little to no contact with the outside world.
As music educators, we had to leap into learning new technology, practically overnight. Our entire community of more than 300 students and instructors began taking advantage of such online meeting platforms as Zoom and Google Meets. The sounds of music stands being set up were replaced by notification bells of students entering a virtual meeting room hosted by an ensemble conductor.
Everyone had to step up. Our students committed to doing their utmost to attend every rehearsal. Our instructors and conductors, rather than preparing to wind down for the summer, began exploring new ways to engage with their students. Our symphony orchestra conductor set aside nearly 33 hours of his own time to spend 30 minutes with each of his 65 students in order to find out how they were doing and explore how he could help work with them through any trouble spots.
Our mariachi director took his voice lessons from the classroom to one-onone instruction — and found that his students lost their inhibitions when not singing in front of their peers. Our elementary strings director challenged her students — some as young as 6 — to compose their own music.
Students in the jazz and orchestra ensembles alike recorded individual tracks and brought them together for combined virtual experiences. For their end-of-season project, all 65 musicians of SFYSA’s most advanced orchestra, the youth symphony orchestra, recorded themselves playing a piece that staff and conductors compiled into a video that allowed all the parts to come together audiovisually.
These performances and more will be on display over the weekend of July 17-19
when SFYSA holds its first virtual concert, which celebrates the music of marginalized composers.
And through this strange, but amazing, period, we managed to pull off something almost unimaginable: We held every rehearsal, as scheduled. In a time when most school teachers reported significant drop-off rates among their students — particularly the youngest — SFYSA students navigated these new virtual worlds so they could stay connected to their music, and to each other.
Not only do they get to continue learning and growing together, but also they encourage and lift each other up during their online sessions, and beyond. This experience has confirmed for all of us just how very vital, uplifting and, indeed, critical music is to our students’ well-being during this uncertain time in the world.
As Youth Symphony Orchestra conductor William Waag said, “They are delighted to see each other when they log on. And continuing to have a reason to practice and prepare music gives them something creative to focus on and a connection to almost normal.”
The uncertainty around the pandemic continues. But what is certain is that music remains a creative outlet, a balm for the soul, and the best possible way for our students to stay connected and move forward as musicians.
Andrea Cassutt is executive director of the Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association (SFSYA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing its community together through youth music education.