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COVID-19

The Elephant in the Shower: Four Seasoned Music Educators Share the Same Concern

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By Stuart Hunt

Among the necessary, and at the same time, egregious choices in which education (choral education in particular) presently finds itself, perhaps we have (necessarily) focused on the immediate, and, at our own peril, not looked far enough down the road.  In our research, nowhere can we find this particular topic being significantly discussed. It affects all of the planning and “putting together” choral conductors do, with or without pandemic and curriculum adjustments. Following are some planning areas we need to attend to.

Recruitment

Consider the methods and means you “normally” employ to demonstrate to your incoming students for next year or in the next few years. Usually, we

  • perform concerts for them
  • invite them to our concerts
  • send them printed or email information
  • talk with colleagues about the students or singers they have and, perhaps, who they might recommend even if they are not currently singing
  • other strategies
  • lots of other strategies

So…waddawegonnado? 

  • Do we actually know who we will have in our choirs when rehearsals resume?
  • Do we know when we could hold auditions or enrollments? 
  • Can we engage with counselors or parents (if private school choirs)? 
  • If you conduct church or adult private or children’s’ choirs, what are your plans and what resources will you need?

Perhaps we’d better discuss this – as a profession.

The Four

Long-time conductor, composer, administrator, and publisher Kenneth Kraintz (ChoirMix.com) shares his concern:

“I have come to the realization that not all public schools (districts) in America are created equal. This is a very broad statement and one that can almost be taken for granted. However, there are some glaring similarities that make outstanding music programs regardless of location.  A dedicated, knowledgeable instructor, supportive administration and parents, access to a wide variety of students, an adequate budget and good facilities all add up to a successful, high quality music program. 

“Another glaring similarity is how quality music programs are quickly damaged, dismantled or done away with entirely. I’ve observed that it takes several years of consistent, quality instruction to build a strong music program. But it only takes one year (or less) to destroy what had gone on before. We are now facing one of those “years” that could potentially ruin quality music programs throughout the entire country. 

“Having gone through nearly a year of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, we have an idea of what we have to endure before we can resume regular classroom routines. When we are finally able to return to face-to-face classroom activities and rehearsals, what will we have left?  I sincerely wish we could just pick up where we left off and recent times would become a distant memory soon forgotten. However, I just don’t believe there is any possibility of that happening.

“When we do return to our schools, administrators will be faced with some very interesting scenarios. First will be a diminished budget because of the stress individual states will have gone through. Lost tax revenues, closed businesses, mass unemployment and strained parental support will all have a negative effect. It could easily be several years before these factors begin moderation. As we have known for decade after decade, when there is a financial crisis of any sort facing public schools, the “arts” are first to suffer the consequences. This is something we live with and quite frankly it has made us work harder and become more accountable.

“The COVID-19 pandemic and all its negative consequences could not have been imagined just a few short months ago. It is my fear that the aftermath of the pandemic, coupled with decreased revenue and expanded curricular demands in our schools could possibly be the death knell for many fine music programs nationwide. 

“Second, any sign of weakness (like falling enrollment) could mean music teachers assigned to other areas of the curriculum, part-time contacts or even total music program elimination. With the rise of STEM and increased graduation requirements, secondary curricula are already stretched to the max. I strongly believe that now is the time to begin a rigorous plan of recruitment to ensure the continuation of our quality music programs.

“Third, recruitment for music programs is like food to the body, without it, you will shrivel and die. Quality music programs in our schools don’t just appear overnight. They are planned, nurtured and developed into a living entity. What keeps them alive is an active recruitment regimen that is maintained over a period of time. Because of the pandemic, this regimen has been interrupted and will need radical intervention to get back on course.

“Therefore, I strongly suggest that anything we do at this time to bolster interest, enrollment and participation in our music groups will have an immense impact on the future of our standing in the curriculum when this disruption ends. A positive, proactive approach is needed to ensure our music programs survive and flourish in the future.”

Steve Stevens, founder and conductor of the Columbia Choirs, is one of the most experienced conductors of community-based children’s choirs in the United States (https://columbiachoirs.org/). He posits:

“There is no question that the online choir experience for singers, conductors and accompanists pales drastically when compared to in-person rehearsals and performances. However, to survive and thrive through this we must forge ahead and adjust to this new, temporary reality and not give-in to the pressures to suspend rehearsals until medical authorities feel it is safe once again. What we do through this unfortunate situation will determine what our future holds or doesn’t hold.

“Why do we exist? What do we do beyond preparing for performance? This new, temporary reality of not meeting in person brings our purpose clearer focus   This causes us to do a gut-check about who we are as choral educators. What are the needs of the singers we are mentoring? Are we leaning toward mentoring singer-performers or singer-musicians? Is the content of our online sessions able to hold our singers’ interest and inspire them to come back each time?

“I believe the best thing to ensure the continuance and growth of your community-based choirs (children, youth, adult) is to keep rehearsing and adjust our approach; inspire your current singers by continuing to forge ahead with more compact (1 hr.?) rehearsal sessions online using Zoom or your choice of platform. Our singers need the social interaction to continue building choir relationships and community. Use “singer profiles” where each week a designated singer uses a form designed to guide sharing his/her personal profile. This is for the purpose of getting to know each other and to find out what we have in common. In your online rehearsal sessions, you can use screen sharing for a variety of purposes; to continue to offer sight-singing melodies, sight-reading rhythms, use Kahoot as a fun way to reinforce what they are learning. In addition, add brief components in breakout sessions for section rehearsals and for instruction in composition, music history, mystery recordings, guided listening using a listening journal, guest seminars on vocal technique, and so on.

“In short, we can

  • use focused content and a positive approach to inspire your current singers to want to continue and to invite their friends to join you
  • auditions can be done online, too
  • beef-up your website content to enthuse prospective members to want to join your choir in the future
  • enhance your online presence…your website/webpage. Everything prospective members see (photos, graphics, colors), hear (performance recordings, testimonials) and experience is an indication of the quality of the experience you offer

“We must do more than hang-in-there! Let’s use this set-back as an opportunity to enhance our skills as a mentor-educator and add even more substantive content to our rehearsal sessions.”

Erik Ronning, of Western Washington University and the University of Washington, is also the 2018 winner of Stanwood, Washington’s Community Man of the Year award. He is in year 26 of conducting choirs at Stanwood High School and his church choir, as well as musicals.

“It goes without saying that these times are challenging for choral music programs, yet the arts are more important than ever. We indeed need to hang on and do our best with our circumstances in the here and now, but we also need to have our eyes on the post-COVID-19 landscape.

“Recruitment is the lifeblood of a choral music program. Many of the opportunities that we usually have to reach out to prospective students are not available at this time. However, there are many areas we can still be active to keep our programs strong. As we strive to recruit kids and remind administrators that are programs are essential, here are a few things to consider:

  • Be a presence at your school in the ways you still can. Drop in to the office, even if you mostly run your online work from home. Stop by to talk with your administration and tell them how you are creatively handling your program.
  • Continue to create content, or at least send out archived recordings. Our communities are starved for current events. I have found such a strong response to anything new that we send out.
  • Our current students are almost always our best recruiters. Connect younger siblings to your program. Ask your students about who is not currently involved with the program that should be. Bring these conversations to the kids for their ideas.
  • Connect with the broader community. If you’re doing any virtual choir work, find a piece that you might be able to reach out to do with your school singers, alumni, community, and/or church choirs. Then be sure as many people get hold of that material as possible.

“There is no substitute for having that freshman tenor standing next to the senior in class, but we can still need to find ways to reach out to that freshman in the ways that we still can. Blessings on your endeavors.”

Stuart Hunt (ToolsforConductors.com), now in his fiftieth year conducting public and private choirs, is passionate about music literacy and helping colleagues:

“As conductors, we expend enormous amounts of energy planning and detailing a list of important tasks and skills to provide and present choirs of artistic musicians who touch the hearts and souls of our audiences. Every presentation represents an invitation to others to join in our artistry and fun. Without significant technical expenditures of time and money, those presentations are on hold.  It is critical we, as a profession, become proactive and craft cogent approaches to bridge this gap. Failure to realize the repercussions and failure to plan could easily engender truly drastic results in the short and long term. I do hope I am proved wrong, but many of our colleagues recognize that it is entirely possible that choirs may not sing together until September 2021. We all hope to move up the calendar start, but it may prove difficult to imagine starting in, perhaps, March or April, or what we would do at that stage.

“Fast-forward to September 2021:

  • Who is in rehearsal?
  • Who should be in rehearsal?
  • What is the skill level of those in rehearsal?
  • What level of music can they sing?

“Scary? As the picture becomes more real, we should be solving this together, because, well, no one will solve it for us.

To that end, our colleagues at Northwest ACDA (6 western states) have created an interactive web spot: https://www.nwacda.org/nn-discussionpost.

Please visit the site, offer concerns, solutions and comments.  We can and must solve recruitment challenges together. Students win, we win.

Prescient Questions

Regarding those who might desire to sing, we will wonder about their

  • previous choral experience         
  • ability to match pitch
  • ability to read
  • age or class year (freshman, sophomore, etc.)
  • part (for balance)
  • Tech skills to handle online rehearsing and part learning
  • digital equipment (computers, smart phones, microphones, earphones)

What might be your

  • seasonal plans?
  • concert plans (or no concerts)?
  • schools plan: Where will counselors and administration stand regarding support and solutions?

For your consideration: If we do not find / posit solutions, we tacitly give those solutions to others in the educational chain, and, likely, we may not be pleased at all with the outcomes. Therefore, it is our desire to make a point of contact available for interactive problem solving and ideas, as well as for further problems to consider. This is, we believe, already late and a significant cause for concern.

May we invite all to join in discussion? By collaborative communication and problem solving, we will, as a profession, have solutions to recommend to administrators, boards, and recruits. This challenge faces all those who depend on reaching new potential members.

Respectfully,
Kenneth Kraintz, Steve Stevens, Erik Ronning, and Stuart Hunt

The Power of Purposeful Collaboration: A 1000-Mile Collaboration between RISE Chorales (Savannah, GA) and Lawrence Community Girl Choir (Appleton, WI), including Composer Matt Carlson (Gettysburg, PA)

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By Karen L. Bruno and Dr. Emily Williams Burch

In a year during which many of us have experienced deep divisions and conflict, purposeful collaboration can be a balm that pulls us together. As teacher-conductors, many of us have spent hours on Zoom meetings and webinars sharing best practices, learning from one another, and building our community of colleagues. But have we considered how to help our singers experience the power of purposeful collaboration? When sitting down to plan for their virtual choir season, RISE Chorales, a Savannah-based choral organization, and the Lawrence Community Girl Choir Program based in Appleton, Wisconsin, started with one overarching goal in mind: through a collaborative musical process, singers would share their stories, exploring both the challenges and the joys of living through a pandemic.

RISE Chorales Founder/Artistic Director, Dr. Emily Williams Burch, met the Lawrence Community Girl Choir Program Artistic Director, Karen Bruno, while serving on the national American Choral Directors Association’s standing committee for Advocacy and Collaboration. Bruno then was a guest on Burch’s “Music (ed) Matters” Podcast, which led to a discussion about creating a meaningful collaboration.

“I love that this project celebrates our singers’ voices – literally and figuratively,” comments Bruno, whose high school choir, Bel Canto, is participating in the collaboration. “As the world changes around them, it’s important that our students have opportunities to be involved in projects that celebrate and incorporate their ideas.”

The culmination of the collaboration will be the co-creation and premier of a new work by composer Matt Carlson. Members of each group will share their experiences of living and making music during a pandemic, and Carlson will set these thoughts to music for the choirs to learn and premier.

“Writing music has been so important to me as a way to process the complex emotional thoughts of the time in which we live,” says Carlson. “It’s a composer’s dream to be able to work with choirs in real-time while writing a new piece. I’m thrilled to collaborate with these excellent choral programs, and to provide a space in which their students may be inspired to respond to our world through writing music of their own.”

During the initial rehearsal, singers learned the song Give Light, a song written by Greg Artzner and Terry Leonino of Magpie. Its text comes from words of civil rights activist Ella Baker; in preparation for the combined rehearsal, both choirs read an article about Baker’s life and critical role in the twentieth-century American voting and Civil Rights movements. As high school girls comprise each choir, centering the words and experience of a Black woman was an important way to begin to build community. The singers then discussed the song’s melody, rhythm, and harmony in small groups, drawing their own parallels between the elements, text, and experience of singing and listening to the song together. Finally, composer Carlson led the singers through Begin, a piece he wrote for treble choirs in June of this year. He explained what inspired him to write the piece and shared important aspects of his composition process.

The choirs will come together four more times between November and February. They will record Begin as one group and will more deeply explore the themes of resilience and community, sharing ideas that will inform Carlson’s new composition. When asked to make up a headline to describe the first rehearsal, singers submitted ideas like, “Music Leads the Change We Need in the World,” “Listening, Learning, and Loving,” and “Powerful Women’s Choirs Unite in Their Individuality.”

This type of collaborative project is not difficult to create, but it does require alignment regarding goals or outcomes. Find a collaborator whose program is aligned with yours in terms of level of expertise, age group, and interest level so that community is easier to build, and be sure to set shared goals for the project that will benefit both programs. If one teacher-conductor or program is doing more of the planning or teaching, or if one teacher-conductor envisions a different final outcome of the collaboration, singers will be caught in the middle of an uncomfortable process.

Also note that collaborations need not take place over several weeks or months – a one-time workshop or experience can be just as impactful as a longer-term commitment. What does your choir need? What can you envision? What are your own strengths and weaknesses? Will your singers grow more if a third person – someone outside both organizations – is at the helm? How will the collaboration benefit everyone involved?

For instance, this project began with teacher-conductors learning about one another’s programs. They identified shared goals and decided upon the scope of the project. They chose rehearsal dates and times and created outcomes for each rehearsal. Meetings before and between rehearsals have featured collaborative, specific, and structured lesson planning. Specificity creates accountability for each participant, ultimately ensuring that each group’s needs are being met.

As the members of RISE and Lawrence’s Bel Canto look to future rehearsals, singers hope to get to know one another, learn the musical culture of each choral program, and make music together. Everyone involved is excited to see how the singers’ words and experiences become textual and musical ideas for a new choral composition. The students immediately understood that they were building a new community through this project and are excited to “overcome distance,” “face adversity,” and “spread love and empowerment” together through this project.

To learn more, visit RISEchorales.com, communitymusic.lawrence.edu/programs/girl_choir, or mattcarlson.co.

Choral Journal Article Preview: Choral Singing with COVID-19 Health Measures

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The latest issue of Choral Journal is online and features an article titled “Acoustical, Psychoacoustical, and Pedagogical Considerations for Choral Singing with COVID-19 Health Measures” by by John Nix, Harald Jers, and Sten Ternström. You can read it in its entirety online at acda.org/choraljournal. Following is a portion of the article. Please read the entire article for more on these recommendations.
_____________________________

Singing Outdoors
Singing outdoors has the potential to remove much if not all of the typical reverberant character of a performance space on the choir’s sound (as experienced inside and outside of the choir), radically changing the Self to Other Ratio (SOR) experienced by the singers. By the ‘Self ’ signal, we mean those sounds of one’s own voice that arrive directly to one’s own ears. By the ‘Other’ signal, we mean the sum of all other sounds that reach the singer, both direct and reflected. The Self-to-Other ratio is represented as the level difference LSelf – LOther, in dB.

A significant component of Other is the diffuse field of sound reverberating in the room. When singing indoors but with wide spacing, the diff use field dominates the Other sound. When singing outdoors, however, the diff use field is absent, and only the direct sound from the rest of the voices in the choir remains in the Other.

Together with the inverse square law, which states that every time the distance from a sound source is doubled, the intensity reduces by a factor of four, this means that one will hear an Other sound that is weaker and greatly dominated by one’s immediate neighbors in the choir, while the singers who are furthest away might be basically inaudible. This has significant implications for maintaining synchronization within the choir. . . .

Physical Distancing
Increased spacing between singers increases the SOR, whether indoors or outdoors, and tends to make the bulk of the Other sound consist of the direct sound from each choir member’s immediate neighbors. With increased spacing indoors, the number of singers on a set of risers or on a stage will by necessity need to decrease. From a viral risk reduction standpoint, fewer singers performing at one time is beneficial, although from a perceptual standpoint for the singers, directors should understand that the SOR will increase as the level of the Other sound is reduced. Increasing the distance between choir members also introduces greater delays in the sound of one performer reaching another. . . .

This article discusses Singing Indoors with Increased Ventilation; Wearing Masks; Practical Suggestions for Choral Conductors, Music Educators, Choral Singers; Reinforced Sound; and Other Technological Possibilities.

View this full article (and more!) in the October 2020 issue of Choral Journal, available online at acda.org

Planning Ahead: Five Considerations for Future Choral Music Classrooms

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ChorTeach is ACDA’s quarterly online publication, designed for those who work with singers of all levels. A full annotated ChorTeach index is available online at acda.org/chorteach. Over 160 articles are organized into seventeen categories. For submission information, to view the index, or to read the latest issue, visit acda.org/chorteach. Following is an excerpt from an article in the Summer 2020 issue titled: Planning Ahead: Five Considerations for Future Choral Music Classrooms by Andrew Lusher. A version of this article will also appear in the upcoming September issue of Choral Journal.

__________________________

My school has an unwritten rule: When something goes wrong, take four minutes and fifty-nine seconds to be emotional. Then it’s time to move forward.

I admit that it took me a bit longer, nearly six weeks, to fully grieve the loss of the end of the school year. When the quarantine mandate was issued, my students and I were two days away from premiering a commissioned work from an internationally-known composer, five days before our annual state assessment, and just over a month until our annual musical production. It felt like the house that we had been designing and building together all year had just disappeared.

Seeing the choral music community adjust to our new reality has been interesting for me. Virtual choirs of all types grace social media. Videos of past concerts from amateur, educational, and professional ensembles are continually featured online. Classroom teachers are taking this time to review theory skills, suggest creative projects, and try social activities that encourage reflection on a student’s musical identity. It’s been wonderful seeing the energy and inventiveness with which colleagues have adjusted to the new reality.

But, let’s face it. When you take the human connection out of music making, you have taken the very soul out of the music. Virtual choirs were a fascination for a few weeks, and asynchronous learning provides momentary instruction, but the heart of it all is missing. Without a practical context in which to implement theory skills, vocal warm ups, or emotional refl ections, the value of participating in a choral ensemble diminishes. Our musical life is not going to return to normal in the near future. Now is the time to start planning and preparing for what comes next.

If history is any indication, choral music performing ensembles will adapt and endure. During the Thirty Years War, Heinrich Schütz famously had to compose with depleting resources. On one Sunday, he may have had only two singers on a voice part and a full consort of instruments, whereas the following week he might have had only a baritone, a soprano, a viol, and a small organ. Yet, due to his resourcefulness and ingenuity, we are left with some of the most fl exible, dramatic, and beautiful choral music ever composed.

Likewise, the descants that sopranos love belting out in church on Sundays were the result of what happened to men during World War II. The number of available men was so reduced in the average church choir that the men and lower voices sang the melody of the tune while the upper voices were given a special part, the descant. It was a way of coping with the strain on the church choir from the ravages of war. Now we can’t imagine Christmas or Easter without men. Choral music making will endure, but it will require creativity to maintain the integrity of our unique musical experience.

You can read more in the Summer 2020 issue of ChorTeach. A summary of the other articles in this issue can be found here: https://choralnet.org/2020/06/summer-2020-chorteach-preview/

Young Trebles: The Silence of a Children’s Choir in the Time of COVID-19

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By Corey Carleton

The treble voices are clear, strong, and at times overwhelm the acoustics of Fellowship Hall at a Presbyterian church on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. It’s a large, live room.

“Are you heavy or light?” Fernando Malvar-Ruiz asks his Concert Choir. Malvar-Ruiz is “Mr. Fernando” to his singers, and Artistic Director of the esteemed Los Angeles Children’s Chorus (LACC).

“Heavy,” several choristers respond. “OK, what can you do to keep this from being heavy?” A few singers call out, “Support.” “That’s right. You need to support your breath,” he agrees. Then adds in his charming Spanish accent, “Let’s see if you can fix it,” he calls from the piano. They try again “Better,” he says.

It’s a Tuesday night in late February and the Concert Choir of LACC is rehearsing for an upcoming gig. The Concert Choir is the organization’s professional treble choir that performs with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, LA Opera, and other A-list classical acts in town. The singers are mostly teenage girls, with a few boys in their soprano prime. Members audition every year to make sure they have a spot in the choir, or move up the ranks of the three apprentice choirs that develop these young musicians into proficient singers. It is not going too far to say LACC’s Concert Choir has one of the most beautiful ensemble sounds on the West Coast. 

Now he gives them a new vocal exercise on the vowels “see-ah” – ascending legato arpeggios on “see” followed by staccato arpeggios descending on “ah.”

“Nice!” He encourages his singers enthusiastically, “Very good! Can you do it again?”

Mr. Fernando’s language is respectful. His rhetoric positive. This is how he drives a roomful of middle schoolers and teenagers beyond their perceived limits. The scene unfolding before me is a best-case scenario of how the art of choral singing is passed down from one generation to another.

On March 4, just over a week before Los Angeles began sheltering in place, LACC’s Concert Choir was at The Wallis in Beverly Hills, warming up to rehearse for an NPR live radio show, From the Top, co-hosted by Peter Dugan and violinist Vijay Gupta. I dropped my son off in the afternoon for a dress rehearsal, and returned that night for the performance with a last-minute ticket in the front row. I sat next to a CEO, who introduced himself. Inches apart in our theater seats, we opted to literally rub elbows instead of shaking hands, because, you know, COVID-19, we told each other.

The show was one classical music youth act after another. High school boys playing a saxophone quartet, middle schoolers playing Chopin on the piano, or Brahms on violin. One girl was a high school junior and a gorgeously refined cellist. Each act was interviewed by the duo, who asked them about their personal experiences of mastering an instrument. Artful music making was being embraced by a younger generation before our very ears and eyes. We were elated after the first act, only to be awed with each subsequent offering on the program.

LACC’s Concert Choir was last on the program. They sang two well-known pieces by J. S. Bach and Harold Arlen – composers who are important to Western music and are centuries apart, chronologically and stylistically. The ensemble of young voices brought new relevance to these old favorites – breathed fresh life into familiar tunes. The effect was infectious. Audience members were on our feet cheering after the last chord dissipated. The CEO and I excitedly expressed our delight with the show to one another, rubbed elbows one last time before I searched backstage for my son to drive him home on a school night. At that moment I was a mom filled with gratitude that my teenager was a part of something so inspiring. As a musician, I was awed that he had opportunities to expand and be a part of an art form that is larger than the individual.

Little did anyone know that night that this was the choir’s final performance of 2020. When Los Angeles first settled in to shelter in place, we thought we would be down for a month, tops. But a month in, LA’s numbers were still rising. Within weeks, news broke of a choir in Washington state that spread the virus to 60 percent of its members in one rehearsal. A month after that, in a webinar co-hosted by NATS, ACDA, Chorus America, Barbershop Harmony Society, and Performing Arts Medicine Association, participants heard scientists say that there was likely no safe way to hold traditional in-person choir rehearsals in the fall, or perhaps until a vaccine is developed. At about the same time, California’s Governor Gavin Newsom announced there would be no live performances until 2021, with no guarantees for the future.

Information was coming from all directions about how the act of choir singing was a “super spreader” event. Even small ensembles with one or two singers were cancelled. If you sang, you were out of work. In an age where social media amplifies our voices, singers were silenced.

By the end of May I watched as my network of singing colleagues grieved on social media about lost performances and opportunities to sing together. Not that anyone thought it was a good idea to keep working. The disease attacked the very thing singers rely on – our ability to control our breath. The irony that COVID-19 killed singing, the pandemic that attacked your lungs and left them with possible lifelong damage, was not lost on singers.

In rehearsal Mr. Fernando’s singers face each other for a sustained exercise on “ooo.” “Are you heavy or light?” he asks again. “Heavy,” comes from a few singers. “Let the sound pour outside you,” he tells them. What happens next takes my breath away. They produce a beautiful, homogenous sound, with gorgeous blend, and they keep the quality going to the bottom of the scale. For readers who are not singers, this is no easy feat.

“That was far better!”

This scene of positive rhetoric shaping young singers is gone now for many of those teenagers.

There are countless studies about how important music is to young, developing minds. Setting aside the years of practice it takes to master an instrument, music is a mental workout with just the melody, harmony, and rhythm. It is in the camp of performing arts that requires you to work both on your own and in a group. You are responsible for your artistry, but you must rely on the artistry of your colleagues to put together an intricate piece of music that requires multiple musicians to perform. You are both alone and part of a whole all at once. I honestly cannot think of a better metaphor for life.

When the shutdown began, I was one of thousands of musicians and performing arts organization board members in California caught off guard. By April, we knew our gigs through June were cancelled. By May, all performances of 2020 were cancelled. I read my daily email with a sinking heart as the news came in. I watched from the sidelines as arts organizations mobilized to put together grants for musicians who they knew would fall through the cracks of federal relief funds. As a board member of an arts organization, I was grateful for something to do. We fundraised to ensure we could pay our musicians in full for cancelled concerts.

I cannot imagine being a talented teenager with a calendar of life shaping opportunities unceremoniously cancelled. As adults, most of us can wait for a safe reopening. That’s not to say it’s not excruciating to watch gigs tick by unsung on your calendar. But, we are adults. We have already had the experiences that formed our dreams and desires. When I think of how brief a time you are a teenager, and how those years inform your being throughout your adulthood, I ache for the teenagers who are losing precious time to make music, theater, dance, film, animation, and more, together.

2020 was supposed to be a seminal year for LACC. In the full stride of his second year (after following the beloved Anne Tomlinson who led the choir for 28 years), Mr. Fernando had made his mark as an exciting new director the choristers loved and respected. He was also the driver who expanded the organization to open one more high-level choir – an SATB ensemble. A first for the organization.

Furthermore, plans were in place to take the Concert Choir on tour in Spain for two weeks in June. Add the radio show, a full performance schedule that included their spring concert, and engagements at the Hollywood Bowl and Skirball Center, 2020 was to be a year filled with extraordinary artistic experiences for their choristers.

Teaching music is an oral tradition, embedded in one-on-one instruction and passed down this way from one generation to another. Music teachers meet in person to teach, listen critically to the sounds their students make, dole out wisdom, guide discipline, and introduce young musicians to composers they would not come across on Spotify. Some musicians can trace their teacher genealogy back several hundred years.

That is not to say you cannot have music lessons online. You certainly can, but you miss a lot in the transfer of information over the internet, such as the tone of the instrument in a live space. Teachers now are listening less, and watching more. They look for physical tension in their Zoom sessions, and trust that if they can teach an economy of movement, the right sound will follow.

Regardless of how many technically exciting virtual choirs you might find on YouTube, you cannot lead an authentic chorus online. As one colleague put it on her social media account, “I don’t want to sit in front of a microphone singing just my part, and then lip-synching it into a video camera with a smile on my face. THIS IS NOT SINGING.”

Chorus is community. It’s coming together to become something bigger than yourself. It’s acoustic. It’s blending with your neighbor. Leading your section. Watching your conductor, and being artistically flexible to do what s/he asks you to do. It is a contract that anywhere from four to eighty people make – that they will come together and sing something simply for the beauty of it.

“It takes intense focus to sing this well,” Mr. Fernando tells his singers in rehearsal in February. “It doesn’t mean it doesn’t have energy.” He’s letting them know he will not let them phone it in. To be in the choir takes more than a commitment to show up to rehearsal. They must engage while they are there. Without this dialogue, they would not be the phenomenal choir they are. Their sound would be more static, less alive. Their phrasing flat. Their pitch wobbly.

Sadly, there’s not a lot of engagement going on these days at LACC, which is to be expected. Choir has turned into an online musicianship course, with a weekly worksheet. There is no communing. No singing together. No blending. No counterpoint, or harmony. No being one with a large body that accomplishes great things.

Milestones are passing these kids by – graduations, proms, sweet 16 parties, driving school, and for some, an A-list summer of activities, such as a choir trip to Spain. These are the growth experiences that transcend school-learning for high school students. Clearly, COVID-19 is going to define this generation, but in what way? I watch as my teenager connects online – going inward at a time in his life when he needs to be guided outward. Opportunity to engage meaningfully is on hold indefinitely, which to teenagers who may be adults by the time the virus is no longer a threat, feels like an eternity.

“If you ask the finest singers about singing on the breath, they say it feels like the sound is outside you and you are doing nothing,” Mr. Fernando tells his singers. There’s a murmur in the room as Mr. Fernando pickups up his baton. Again, their attention focuses on him.

“Remember, on the breath.”

This piece first appeared in ECAMERONline, a pop-up project in which members of this community take turns telling stories, as did the original protagonists of Boccaccio’s Decameron, to pass the days while they were in flight from the plague in Trecento Florence.

Corey Carleton is a Baroque soprano with music degrees from University of California – Berkeley and Indiana University, who lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son. She has sung nationally and internationally, but primarily performs chamber music in Southern and Northern California with groups such as Tesserae Baroque, Corona del Mar Baroque Festival, and Les Violettes – ensembles that champion the music of the Italian Renaissance, Bach, Buxtehude, and the French Baroque. When Corey isn’t singing, she’s writing for small businesses and arts organizations. 

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