A New Era For Music Education

from Mandevillian, 2020, Vol35, No1

Lead Us On

It is a very interesting time to be a musician. Confined to home with all performance venues closed, with what should be all the time in the world to practise, yet so much on our minds that it often seems hard to find the motivation to even get started.

Thankfully, the wonderful music staff and students at Loreto Toorak have found the secret to breaking the isolation, thriving in their music-making pursuits as part of the ever-increasing and engaging online music community. Thanks to the amazing music staff, students and, in particular, parents at Loreto Toorak, almost all of the 450 individual instrumental music lessons and 28 ensembles that occur each week for students from Preparatory to Year 12 successfully migrated online in a new and exciting era for music education.

All of the ensembles have taken this opportunity to trial new methods and platforms that allowed the students to continue playing in an ensemble setting while away from campus. These platforms allowed students to read, compose, and playback much of the music they were already working on in Term 1 rehearsals, with the added bonus of a real-time assessment and feedback as to what students can improve upon for the next playing.

One of the most pleasing things to witness has been the simple understanding that music has the power to allow the performer, composer, teacher and listener to transcend their current situation.

These programs gave the Ensemble Directors the feedback and student recordings required to know what the next steps are in progressing the development of the whole ensemble and each individual player. Many of the same solo performance opportunities still took place, including the prestigious Oak Parlour and Rathfarnham Recitals, in the new format of dedicated Music Performance Channels in Microsoft Teams. New initiatives like the themed Weekly Performance Challenges allowed students to break away from their regular learning and record a video of themselves playing a piece of their choosing to fit the theme. These channels allowed students to continue their musical development and performance confidence while supporting their peers to break the isolation. While the necessary shift to pursuing music education through these brilliant new technologies has been extremely innovative and successful, one of the most pleasing things to witness was the simple understanding that music has the power to allow the performer, composer, teacher and listener to transcend their current situation. It is for this reason that Music has continued to thrive during the COVID-19 school isolation, just as it was when students were on campus. Music has given students and their teachers a way to break the isolation and come together to create, hone, and perfect something that is so special to each of them.