JAVS Summer 2021

University continued to find ways to keep cameras turned on and students engaged in studio meetings. Gebrian found that she could continue her regular non-COVID reading/journal assignments, but in order to have a more robust discussion during studio class she assigned discussion leaders each week. Devorye, who like most of us had never had a Zoom meeting before March 2020, worked through immediate issues with sound delay and bad connections by pairing up students in duos and trios to record individual chamber music parts separately. Embracing the technology, Devorye, violist in the Avalon String Quartet, learned how to combine individual recordings and his students were able to produce several chamber music “collaborations.”

Theme with Variations movement from Hindemith’s op. 31 no. 4 Solo Sonata. His students, including incoming freshmen and grad students, met with him online all summer to learn and study the piece. The project involved assigning a different variation to each studio member to learn in depth. As the school year began, the NIU Viola Studio was able to give one of the first in person recitals of the semester with a socially distant yet continuous performance of the movement, and he later turned it into a YouTube Video featuring the whole group playing the theme and taking turns on the variations. Devorye reported that through this project, his students sounded like a “cohesive unit in the orchestra” when classes resumed in the fall.

Perhaps the pandemic project Devorye is most proud of was an in-depth studio collaboration of the famous

Pre-College teachers also used technology in creative ways to keep in touch with their students. Sarah Montzka,

A viola “family tree” created by one of the participants in Sarah Montzka’s Summer Viola Adventures classes.

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

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