JAVS Summer 2021

In The Studio

Creating Community During a Pandemic

By Katherine Lewis

Viola teachers around the country found themselves in the midst of a huge learning curve in March 2020 as they struggled to figure out glitchy connections, sound settings, latency, camera placement, and a whole host of other issues related to online pandemic teaching. In the midst of the chaos, many teachers embraced the change and challenges, determined to help their students feel connected to their peers and mentors through a host of creative projects and programs. “Is it a pasta or a composer?”—a fun Zoom game involving mixing Italian composer names with obscure pasta types—was one of the first viral virtual games that teachers shared with each other as their group classes abruptly went online. 1 As teachers scrambled to find engaging content to keep their programs going and their students connected, they began sharing tips on social media for embracing the constraints of the technology. Meanwhile, teachers of violists at all ages and levels created some unprecedented opportunities for online learning. In fact, in some ways, the 2020–21 school year was marked by a renewed sense of belonging to this unique community for teachers and their students, as a wide range of programs were developed to help fill the space where in person activities used to take place. One of the first violists to create such programming in the early days of the pandemic was Molly Sharp, principal violist of the Richmond Symphony and founder of VlaTutti.com. She was inspired by her clarinet colleague at Virginia Commonwealth University to create a free group warm up for violists over Zoom. Using social media to promote the group, she welcomed hundreds of violists from around the country to join her on Zoom for an hour of stretching, yoga, left hand exercises, scales, and bowing exercises three times a week during the spring of

2020. As the group took off, she invited guests to lead the warm ups on Fridays, tapping into a huge network of well-known pedagogues. “Community is what’s important right now,” Sharp emphasizes, and through the Viola Warm Up she was able to provide an online viola home for adult amateurs, students, and professional violists alike who tuned in to warm up together, muted, on Zoom. The success of the Viola Warm Up led to two other online projects including a Viola Boot Camp to help violists with practice accountability and goal setting, and a six-week Wellness Workshop last fall which introduced students to teachers of yoga, Alexander Technique, Body Mapping, and other practices that musicians use to overcome and avoid playing-related injuries. On a local level, college teachers were among the first to scramble as one by one, universities announced an immediate transition to online learning over university spring breaks in early March 2020. For some teachers such as Molly Gebrian at the University of Arizona, teaching through Zoom or Skype was not difficult on a personal level, as she has been teaching a small cohort of German students for many years online. While the lesson transition itself was not new for Gebrian, she noticed that her students needed extra help with wellness goals to help cope with new anxiety caused by online learning and the uncertainty of the pandemic in general. Through weekly wellness assignments that included taking a walk every day, practicing short meditations, and creative non musical activities, Gebrian was able to help her students transition into their new routine and help them through their mental health challenges.

As the 2020–21 school year began, college professors including Gebrian and Tony Devroye at Northern Illinois

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 37, 2021 Online Issue

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