Music But Make it Zoom

On Wednesday, October 21, our IB1 Music students overcame COVID-19 restriction struggles to have their first music recital.

The recital happened after school in Room M3 of the theater. Since this year’s IB1 Music class has a small size of five people, the recital was over in 30 minutes, going from 3:00 to 4:00. Unfortunately, to comply with COVID-19 regulations, no non-faculty audience members were allowed on campus, so parents and students had to join via Zoom livestream.

Performing in the IB1 Music Recital, in front of an audience, is a required part of taking IB Music. This year, in order to ensure the IB1 students could meet this requirement, the music department and school administration had to find a recital date where enough faculty could be present as audience members and performers could get home on the after school bus.

Additionally, the recital had to be postponed from October 13, because newly-out-of-quarantine IB1 teacher Ms. Staver had to take over the recital coordination from IB2 teacher Dr. Taylor, and it was difficult to run it on her first day back on campus.

Jasmine Y., is proud of herself for only making one small mistake despite her nerves about being the last performer: “My voice was a bit shaky since I was shaking and I couldn’t control my [breath] properly. But I think it didn’t affect my performance that much.” Jasmine’s performance also had some technical problems because the mic could not pick up her performance, so she had to restart her piece. Luckily, this restart was good for her because her voice wasn’t warmed up in the first try.

David Y. spent all his free blocks, 4 hours per week, practicing for this recital. Because it has been so long since his last public performance, David was a bit nervous: for him, the biggest challenge was how to “overcome [his] nerve and play the piece with ease.” However, this nervousness was balanced with his favorite part of the recital, which was actually getting to play the pieces to the audience.

Bryson C.’s performance was his own composition. He really enjoyed preparing for the recital because music composition is something he actually enjoys and doesn’t feel the need to procrastinate. Although he ran into blocks where he was out of ideas when improving the piece, he was motivated to keep working just by how much he loved the whole process of music composition.

Amy N.’s favorite part of the recital was getting to watch other performances and how different people interpreted their pieces. From watching other performers over the last few weeks, she also picked up on new ways to practice and perform. About her own performance, Amy says: “I felt like my performance had bits to improve but I don’t regret how I performed.” If she could prepare again for the recital, she would have spent a bit more time practicing and interpreting the music, she is overall very pleased with her performance.

Like Amy, Ms. Staver learned a lot about her students from watching the performances: although she only knows two of the students from orchestra last year, “being able to hear their music and their voices as artists really helped [her] get to know them more than anything else.” Ms. Staver feels very proud of the performers and was very happy with how many people showed up both online and on campus to support them.

Although the dates are still tentative, there are some planned music events for semester 1. If you like music or just want to support a friend, stay tuned for the band concert (December 1, evening), choir and orchestra (December 3, evening) and next IB Recital (December 15, afternoon). It can mean a lot to the performers and the music department!