Just over a year ago, on May 18, 2020, I published a piece here called From Carnegie Hall to 4’33”: Reflections on a Semester Gone Sideways. It chronicled the nine or so weeks between the initial COVID shutdowns and the end of my school year. That felt like an eternity. And yet, we’ve been living in that world for all of the 53 or so weeks since then. At no point during that time did I feel that I had anything to add to that story, until now. With the 2020-2021 year closing, there appears to be some hope for the future. But that did not always seem true. Here is a look at how all of that unfolded.
Whatever initial post-semester relief I felt evaporated on May 25, 2020, when George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. The world exploded into demands for racial justice. Being in a small town with two small kids (then 5 and 2) and an out-of-control pandemic, I felt powerless to do anything real. But I tried – I published posts here on several pieces having to do with social justice. I helped draft a meaningful Black Lives Matter statement for the New York State Band Directors Association (NYSBDA), and I joined their newly-formed Equity and Inclusion committee, which led to some outstanding clinics and discussions at the NYSBDA Symposium in March 2021. More to come on that.
With two little kids stuck at home and the need to entirely re-design band for the COVID environment, time off that summer was not possible. My school, Hartwick College in upstate NY, unveiled their Social Compact on June 21, which set the ground rules for a return to in-person classes for that Fall. This document essentially promised all students access to both in-person and online class options, promised to open the campus to all students, faculty, and staff, and closed the campus to any and all outside visitors except deliveries and prospective students. It also mandated mask wearing and distancing on campus and initiated a testing and quarantine system. This allowed me to begin to developing a framework of what in-person (actually hybrid) COVID band would look like at Hartwick.
I also relied heavily on the findings of the NFHS Aerosol Study and the work of the Creative Repertoire Initiative and their Facebook page, which was a dedicated space for composers to share their flexible instrumentation music. I became somewhat of a local authority on wind instrument COVID mitigations, which led to a gig fronting a brass quintet for the Oneonta Community Concert Band at a live-streamed outdoor concert on July 19. (Incidentally, at our only rehearsal on my back patio, one of my neighbors called in a noise complaint on us, leading us to brand ourselves the Oneonta Outlaws Brass Quintet, after the local baseball team.) This set off the lightbulb that we could gather any group of musicians and try out all kinds of flex music. So I pulled together the Backyard Flex Band of Upstate New York, essentially as a dress rehearsal for what I knew I would be doing at Hartwick in the Fall. I contacted local musicians in mid-July, and ended up scheduling four sessions with between four and ten musicians, each at a different outdoor location, with mostly different players at each session, all for readings of new flex music. We were trying to also model best practices, but as you can see from this clip of the second session, we were still finding our way on masks and bell covers:
The nearly non-existent COVID outbreak in our region that summer allowed for all of this to happen with no transmission whatsoever. But this would not last – the final session, scheduled for the last weekend in August, would end up being cancelled due to a growing outbreak at the other college in town.
This also coincided with the beginning of the Fall semester at Hartwick. The Backyard Flex Band sessions had helped me solidify my framework for band that semester, and given me some great repertoire ideas. I knew I had to split my 28 in-person students into two groups, which ended up being a Tuesday Band and a Thursday Band. I had two rehearsal spaces ready to go each night so we could stick with the Aerosol Study recommendation that groups only play for half an hour at a time before allowing the air to change over. My wife made bell covers for every player. I was READY. But on September 1, the day of our first meeting, before I had even assigned them all to their ensembles, classes were abruptly sent online due to the escalating outbreak at the other college in town – it eventually grew to over 700 cases. We were right back at the beginning of the pandemic, facing two weeks of mandated remote learning, with the searing memory that those original two weeks had turned into an ongoing eternity. I managed to provide everyone with instruments this time, since all the students were expected to remain on campus despite not being able to congregate in classrooms. I even managed to get them all auditioned (remotely) and set up in the two separate ensembles – we even met remotely and got to know each other and the music a little. Then, after those 14 days had passed, we did, in fact, begin in-person rehearsals.
Immediately, we were up against new and unanticipated challenges. Bell covers made the lowest range of woodwind instruments impossible to achieve – they were especially tough on the clarinets, who could no longer play their middle B properly. While most of my students were there in the room, I had to have Zoom open at every rehearsal for the remote students. This also meant that I had to have all of the music available both in person and remotely, since any in-person student could end up on a quarantine at any time. Finally, despite the aerosol study’s recommendation of 6 foot distancing, New York State had instituted a 12 foot distancing requirement for bands and choirs in schools. At that distance, listening was very difficult, and filling a room with sound even more so. I found myself encouraging the students to play out as much as possible at every turn. I also found myself tearing up at the sound of our first B-flat scale, and I told them so! Times were tough, but on balance, we were glad to be together again.
We couldn’t have a proper concert, so we put together a Watch Party for the end of the semester. Knowing that anyone could be in quarantine at any moment, I set out to be as flexible as I could both in terms of the music we played and the circumstances under which we recorded. Again, unexpected problems arose. A lot of flex music simply didn’t work with our instrumentation – we had an overabundance of flutes, so several flex pieces that we tried were still seriously overbalanced towards the top, with only very few players left to cover the bottom parts. Even when something did work, the unexpected absence of even one player could derail an attempted performance, or at least lead to a scramble for replacement music. I started bringing an audio recorder (Zoom brand, ironically) and two video devices (in addition to my laptop running Zoom) to every rehearsal, and shuttling them between our two spaces, just in case it was a good recording day. On top of that, we did virtual recordings as guides for our usual high school Honor Band – that proved a challenge for the non-music majors, who weren’t able to play in our practice rooms due to COVID restrictions. I also had them all working on what I thought would be a fun concert programming project in order to make up the time for only going to one rehearsal each week instead of the usual two. While we all generally enjoyed the results, I ended up with 28 Google Sheets tabs open for the entire semester so I could monitor each student’s weekly progress. When we went fully online for the end of the semester after Thanksgiving, as originally planned, I tried to have them do another virtual project on their own as a “final.” Those recordings proved too inconsistent to use in an “ensemble” video, despite the time we’d spent on the piece in our in-person rehearsals.
It was a lot. It was too much. Every day felt like we were starting from scratch.
Not that there weren’t bright spots. Our Brass Ensemble, a student quintet with me pinch hitting on second trumpet, proved especially resilient, taking advantage of some warm October and November days to play and even record outside, all over campus. The Honor Band involved all of our students and much of the wind and percussion faculty, as well as some guest composers (John Mackey and Kelijah Dunton), and we had record turnout among high school students – it felt like a coming-together for something bigger than ourselves. My community group, the Catskill Valley Wind Ensemble, put out a truly joyous virtual version of Sleigh Ride. And when the Watch Parties premiered (one for chamber ensembles, one for Wind Ensemble and Honor Band), the chat windows lit up and the response was very positive. Here is what they looked like:
Chamber Ensembles:
Wind Ensemble:
BONUS Catskill Valley Wind Ensemble Sleigh Ride:
Still, my overall feeling was one of defeat. I had extended myself to the max, kept a happy (masked) face, and ended up with a perfectly fine musical product in a time when many groups weren’t able to play at all. But the inspiration and excitement that I always seek to share with my students simply wasn’t there, and the results did not seem to match the extraordinary efforts I felt I had expended. The holding pattern from the beginning of the pandemic persisted, still with no end in sight.
After the semester ended, I stepped away from school, and from music, for several weeks (I recognize that this is a luxury most of my K-12 colleagues did not have). For a while, I couldn’t even bring myself to look at scores or think about music. I skipped Midwest. My lowest point came in early January, right around the peak of the pandemic and the Capitol Insurrection. Like the USA, I felt lost and out of control, unable to find a way forward. But slowly, things started turning around. I started taking walks every day as a physical and mental health exercise. I reconnected with a couple of musician friends and talked to them about music that excited them. I picked up a new (to me) music podcast, Ic2us, which led me to call a friend and talk about finding inspiration. A big turning point came while watching the Inauguration ceremony on January 20, which turned out to be a band concert with speeches. Hearing the President’s Own play so much music at such a high level was inspiring enough, but the big moment came when Garth Brooks sang Amazing Grace unaccompanied, and asked all of us everywhere to join in. I am no Garth Brooks fan, but I felt the power of our connection across those many miles, and I was really and truly moved. It somehow made me feel hopeful in a way I hadn’t felt in months.
The next day, Frank Ticheli released a brand new flex version of his Amazing Grace (on his birthday, no less), and I joined the chorus of people on the internet yelling “take my money!” The first kernel of a themed Spring program took root.
At this point, I realized why the Fall’s music had failed to inspire as a group. I had selected each piece entirely because I knew it would work. This is not to say that any of that music was less than 100% driven by inspiration: I believed strongly in each choice, and I still do. But the only idea that connected them was that they all simply worked.
Spring’s program grew out of Amazing Grace and followed the idea of inspiration itself, looking not at what worked but at what was fun, or moving, or even a little scary: I went with the option that scared me the most in almost every case. It felt like a much better starting point.
As the Hartwick Spring program was taking shape, two other long-term projects came to fruition. On January 27, Hartwick hosted a virtual release party for the Faculty Wind Octet album recorded way back in September 2019. The editing had been delayed once the pandemic hit, but we persisted and got it done early in the Fall of 2020. The release party was a rare musical celebration, and a chance to reunite with the amazing people involved in that project, if only virtually. Then on March 5, the NYSBDA Virtual Symposium began. As the First Vice President of this group, I curated the content for this, including clinicians, performances, and the aforementioned discussions about equity, inclusion, and racial justice. I got to interview Anthony McGill on his career and his activism, which we followed with a discussion with our Equity and Inclusion committee. I experienced a moment of clarity and revelation during a yoga session. We all got to celebrate our students through the Honor Band program, which we kept going virtually. It felt like a celebration of the very best values that are possible in bands, as well as a joyous reunion of colleagues, even through Zoom boxes.
The picture was not entirely rosy as the Hartwick Wind Ensemble entered Spring. My 28 players had dwindled to 24 by the end of the Fall, and to 18 as Spring started. With 12 foot distancing still in effect, we still could not all fit in either of our rehearsal spaces, so we had to continue the two ensemble model. Rather than saddle ourselves with only 9 in each ensemble, I invited the students to volunteer to be in both groups, resulting two groups of 12 with a handful of players who got to come full time.
To lighten my load, I enlisted our department intern, Adam Fredette (another luxury that I know many folks don’t have) to assume recording duties whenever possible. I also gave out multiple flex parts for each piece to every player so there would be no more mad scrambles for replacement parts. These changes, and the acceptance that mistakes would inevitably be made, led to a steep drop in my stress level during rehearsals, and an overall much more enjoyable environment. My source of greatest stress was the lack of any percussionists in either ensemble. I didn’t want to limit us to percussion-less repertoire, so I attempted to lead from the drum set – and failed spectacularly. Thankfully, I had two student conductors, James Dana and Ushuaia Diaz, whose thorough preparation on two pieces each allowed me to provide some percussion color after LOTS of practice. I grew as a musician while they grew as conductors.
Things started on a noticeable upward trajectory in April. I got to conduct my first concert in over a year, with the Oneonta Community Concert Band, on April 18. We were small (15 players), distanced, masked, and covered, and had to duck in and out of the venue for rehearsal and the performance in 30 minute increments, but it was SO great to be back. The program revolved around Ticheli’s flex version of “Amazing Grace” and ended up going in all kinds of fun directions. Check out that full concert here.
Back at Hartwick, April’s improvements continued to manifest. First, I had long planned for an outdoor concert at the end of the semester with the combined forces of our two ensembles. 18 student musicians did not constitute a full band, so I recruited from among our faculty and staff for additional players (the campus was still closed to guests and visitors) and got an enthusiastic response. In the meantime, New York State revised its distancing recommendations to 6 feet. We immediately implemented this change in the small ensembles, and the difference was instant: we were able to blend and tune better, and playing together suddenly felt like receiving a warm hug. We also started rehearsing outdoors whenever possible. At the first set of these, during a rare Upstate NY warm spell in early April, each of the small bands read through a Sousa march, and we could feel the full band energy begin to reappear despite our small numbers. We capped that part of the semester with another watch party, chronicling all of our indoor activities in a “Past, Present, Future” framework.
Full band rehearsals began in earnest at the end of April, with several of our non-student volunteers joining in regularly. Whether we were indoors or out, the energy was palpable. The program was two slow classics (Amazing Grace and Irish Tune), a Sousa march (Semper Fidelis), and a relatively new firecracker by Haley Woodrow (In Two Places). Rehearsals were glorious, and the eventual outdoor concert, shared with our Chamber Ensembles (Brass, Flutes, and Percussion) crackled with energy. It turns out that having a live audience DOES make playing music more exciting! This concert helped me remember the true joy of making music for others.
On the heels of this concert, Catskill Valley Wind Ensemble released another joyful video, this time of Michael Markwoski’s Camerado, which is an ode to the purest form of irreverent friendship that transcends time and place. We used it to celebrate those friends whom we haven’t seen since the pandemic took over, but who remain in our hearts every day – like our band mates!
In the days since these joyous events, I have gotten only positive feedback from everyone involved in either project, or who even heard about them. I surveyed the Hartwick students: while they admit to enjoying parts of the small ensemble experience, their hearts are clearly in the full band. Hartwick has announced that vaccination will be required for anyone on campus in the coming Fall, meaning that I can likely fulfill the students’ desire and return to no distance, full band activities. I know the actual music making experience for full band was qualitatively different (BETTER) than the small ensembles (and CERTAINLY virtual ensembles), but I also know that we were more able to feed off of each others’ energy and enjoy each others’ company in a more meaningful and fully realized way in the full band. It is a reminder that band is really about community, and lifting each other up, and celebrating each other with our collective energy. Taken another way, it is a reminder that music can and should always be a celebration. As I continue to seek the lessons of this tumultuous year, this will be my North Star.