Erin Armstrong ’20 is among the Elon music majors who will be performing their spring recitals online as the Department of Music adapts to remote learning.
Update: Sarah Leonard ’20 will be performing her senior recital at 4:15 p.m. on April 21. The recital may be viewed via Facebook Live.
She will be performing piano works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn, Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albéniz.
When Erin Armstrong ’20 sits down at her piano to perform works by Beethoven, Chopin and Ravel on Monday night, the audience won’t be gathered in front of her in Whitley Auditorium as she had hoped. When she concludes her senior recital, they will applaud her performance by clicking on their computers or tapping out comments rather than clapping their hands.
Armstrong is the first Elon music major to stream her recital online this spring, plowing new ground as many of the activities and interactions that make up an Elon education evolve in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. With the support of the Department of Music, Armstrong is testing out a new way to perform and broadcast her final recital at Elon, a performance she’s been working toward for nearly four years as she has majored in music in the liberal arts as well as in biochemistry. After graduation, she will head to the University of Missouri-St. Louis College of Optometry.
Since leaving campus as Elon has shifted to online learning mode, Armstrong has been connecting with Professor of Music Vicky Fischer Faw remotely for lessons as she fine-tunes her performance, which she has been working on since last summer. One method for that has been for Armstrong to record her performance, post them to Google Drive, and then have Fischer review them and offer feedback. Videoconferencing such as WebEx hasn’t provided a high level of audio quality, making it a difficult tool to use to offer real-time feedback.
“We’re keeping the lessons going, and we have our time together,” Fischer said. “The recordings allow me to get a snapshot of what it sounds like, and then we get together online to talk about it.”
Faculty and students in the Departments of Music and Performing Arts are among those at Elon who rely heavily on being able to work together face-to-face given the nature of the subject. Hallie Hogan, associate professor of music and chair of the department, said there have been challenges, but the innovative way that students and faculty are approaching these challenges can sometimes have hidden benefits.
For instance, she said she is now working with vocal students and examining recordings of their performances when she would have normally given real-time, in-person feedback. “Watching students and listening to them in a video helps me focus in on certain aspects that I can review and highlight in their next lesson,” Hogan said.
The department typically gathers in Whitley Auditorium on Tuesdays for departmental meetings that often include performances by students or faculty, presentations and announcements. Those departmental meetings have continued, but online, with students in particular sharing recorded performances of what they are working on while away from campus, Hogan said.
“We always have some kind of gathering every Tuesday — the Music Department is a very strong community,” Hogan said. “Now all of our music majors are able to post online any kind of information, they are able to post video performances, music content — even share music jokes. It’s like what we would normally do when we get together in Whitley, but moved online.”
Among the information shared during the recent departmental meeting was about Armstrong’s upcoming performance. Armstrong selected the three works she will perform — a Ludwig van Beethoven sonata, a Frederic Chopin etude and a sonatina by Maurice Ravel — last summer and has been working toward her recital since then. Fall was spent memorizing them, as well as increasing the quality of her performance. “I put a decent amount of time into it every single day,” Armstrong said.
But since returning home to St. Louis after in-person classes were canceled, Armstrong has also had to work on how to best broadcast her performance remotely. Facebook Live has offered the most promising platform from an audio quality level, so she’ll start the stream shortly before down at her piano at 5 p.m. EST on Monday, April 6. The Elon community is invited to tune in here for the performance, which should last about 45 minutes.
Armstrong said the process of working out the technological aspects of her performance has added another level of stress, but a recent trial run has calmed her nerves a bit. Performing in front of a webcam from her home in St. Louis without an in-person audience has both positives and negatives, she said.
“In a way, it will be less stressful, because I won’t see how many people are watching,” Armstrong said. “It will be like a practice, playing in front of my computer when in reality, there are a lot more people behind the screen. It will be weird between pieces because you won’t hear anyone clapping or anything, but it also eliminates that distraction of people opening up cough drops or people coughing.”