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Classical Music Instruction Goes Virtual During Pandemic

The Northeast is starting to reopen with businesses welcoming back customers with safety precautions in place. It has been a challenging few months for music teachers, like the guitarist we profiled Wednesday. In part two of our story, we visit the classical section.

“When you’re sitting at the desk and in the hallway and you’re walking by, we have 11 rooms, and you walk through the studio and you can just hear all of this music and all of these students and all of the improvements that they’re making in the pieces that they’re working on and that’s something that comes to mind when I think about being back in the studio just – hearing more of the music again.”

Kelly Lockwood is the office manager of the Guilderland Music Academy. She teaches oboe and clarinet but one of her main tasks right now is managing Zoom breakout rooms for virtual private lessons.

When the coronavirus closures began, Lockwood says the music academy took about a week to go virtual.

“To learn how to use the Zoom and to get the calendar switched over,” Lockwood said. “And get all the students the information they needed to get online and then we spent a significant amount of time training our teachers.”

They have about 40 teachers on staff and when they made the switch to virtual lessons they lost about 100 students – from 500 to 400. Some thought their children were too young for virtual lessons. Others didn’t think it was worth the money.

Lockwood says the biggest adjustment for the teachers was preparing for each lesson ahead of time by making sure the student has the sheet music and the camera is positioned well for that instrument.

“With some of the instruments like piano or voice or drums there’s a little bit of setup that goes into it,” Lockwood said. “And finding the best way that the teacher can see the student and make sure that they are playing properly and also that the student can see the teacher.”

Lockwood says even though the lessons are virtual – the prices remain the same.

“Even if it is remote – we’re still offering them something that’s worth it,” Lockwood said.

Lockwood says the Zoom lessons are going well but Guilderland Music Academy is hoping to welcome the students back soon.

“It’s a very emotional art that you’re working with,” Lockwood said. “Playing music and performing is something that you’re basically putting your own heart on the line for when you do these performances and as a result of that I find that teachers and their private students tend to build a pretty close bond.”

Bing Liu is a co-founder of the Berkshire Trio. She plays violin and viola and teaches at the Berkshire Music School and plays in the Berkshire Symphony. Liu has around 50 students aged 3 to 52. She gives about eight lessons a day and she says the transition to virtual lessons has been smooth, but she misses group classes.

“The internet always is one second delay, two second delay,” Liu said. “So you can’t really bring whole bunch of people to play together. It’s extremely hard.”

Regardless, Liu has figured out how to play duets with students.

“Just watch their bow,” Liu said. “And don’t let [them] follow you - you follow them.” You can’t listen to the song because the song will give you [the] wrong direction. Just no way.”

Liu says she learned that to play a virtual duet you also have to turn your microphone way down.

“I sometimes put it on mute to play with them,” Liu said. “Sometimes when you play too loud you can’t hear them. They can’t hear you. So I have to play extremely soft so they can hear me [and] I also can follow them.” 

Liu says the virtual lessons are actually bringing out a more serious side to her youngest students.

“Usually they are, ‘ha ha ha’ so I noticed that they are really serious. I was impressed. After lessons the parents text me, ‘Oh my God, did you see that?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I had no idea how focused they are,’” Liu said.

But she says one of the biggest changes during the pandemic is how involved the parents have to be. Many of her students are under the age of 10 and don’t know how to tune their violin. So she is giving lessons to parents solely focused on how to help their child. She has even driven to a student’s house to tune their violin on the front lawn – socially distanced.

Even though the virtual lessons are going well, Liu says it’s just not the same as seeing the families and joking with the students in person.

“The parents. I really love them,” Liu said. “They are really beautiful families. And they really support me. It’s just nice to see them every week.”

Daniel Kurganov offers private violin lessons in Boston. He owns his own production company but can’t welcome artists right now. Kurganov normally teaches an intensive two-week mastercourse in Boston over the summer, but due to the pandemic that’s canceled too, so he’s turned his attention to his students and his YouTube channel “The Artist’s Technique,” where he provides free violin lessons for his 21,000 subscribers.

But Kurganov is incorporating many platforms for his private students. He drops sheet music and exercises on a shared Google Drive, does live lessons on Zoom, and sends short technique videos in between lessons, asking for videos back of them practicing.

Like many of the other teachers WAMC interviewed, Kurganov says he is watching more than listening during the lessons because of the internet constraints.

“There are certain signs of tension,” Kurganov said. “So, tension is a big issue we deal with as string players in general and part of teaching is always to keep an eye on places where tension can creep up.”

Kurganov isn’t worried about the future of classical lessons, even if the virtual lessons stretch on. He says music teachers just need to adapt and embrace the new technology.

“You know on the macro level classical music - it’ll always be there,” Kurganov said. “And it’s not a very volatile industry it’s always kind of hovering at 2%. But on the micro level people need to make a living and they’re affected by this. So what I found was that there’s an opportunity to reach people in a new way and to pivot the business strategy.”

All the music instructors featured in this story say that for the most part their students have stuck with them during the pandemic – but with the understanding that they want to return to in-person instruction as soon as possible.

In the age of screens, a music lesson is just not the same if you’re not in the same room.

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