Performance majors adjust to virtual classes
CoPA’s Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music grapples with practice rooms no longer being available to students. Panther Archives
Chapman’s College of Performing Arts (CoPA) boasts a variety of majors and minors grounded in the arts, but most renownedly is home to the university’s theater, dance and music programs. As the aforementioned creative outlets are historically rooted in in-person instruction, students and professors in CoPA are facing distinctive challenges to remote learning this fall.
Each department has been forced to adapt to new technological obstacles as the coronavirus pandemic continues to affect faculty and students’ abilities to take advantage of the university campus. However, the performing arts classes have been particularly affected, with practice rooms no longer available to music students and live performances adapting to a virtual setting.
Despite setbacks, performing arts professors have been doing their best to persevere in spite of the difficulties, provide students with a positive learning experience and adapt to the phrase, “The show must go on.” That particular show, however, is nothing they’ve ever experienced before.
Janice Park, who teaches piano and piano pedagogy through Zoom, has her students send their recordings to her for proper evaluation and feedback. However, she told The Panther the teaching environment through a camera is just not the same.
“Music lessons are challenging via Zoom,” Park said. “I feel bad for students who moved back to Orange and then learned they’re not allowed to use practice rooms. They’ve had to borrow a keyboard for their lessons instead of playing an acoustic grand piano at my studio.”
Adam Borecki, the director of Music Technology, found that the most difficult change was altering his entire curriculum from the advanced software in the music tech lab to a free software that students could access from home. In Borecki’s class, he’s noticed that not only are music performance majors impacted by the social distancing guidelines enforced by the university, but live performance majors have also hit roadblocks in terms of something as simple as Wi-Fi connection.
“Because there’s too much latency on Zoom you can’t perform live, and with ensembles and group performances, it’s impossible to do,” Borecki said. “So what we’re doing now is having each person record their own part to a metronome so everyone is in time with each other. Then, we align all the video files and play them at once.”
Several performing arts students voiced their struggle adjusting to changes. Sanaz Bashiri, a senior vocal performance major, told The Panther that her choir and opera classes sometimes resort to muting themselves to sing along with the pianist.
“It’s not the full experience because the point of choir is hearing the people around you,” Bashiri said. “It’s all about being in the same room, and we can’t do that. But the department is really offering anything to make our lessons better. I didn’t have a proper microphone and they sent me one to use.”
Senior piano performance major Thuy Phan explained how lecture-based courses were easier to transition online, as many became almost socratic seminar-based. However, others were difficult to maintain.
“It’s kind of disheartening that some classes, like small ensembles, were canceled because I felt it was extremely doable online,” Phan said. “More performative classes like university treble choir, improvisation and conducting don’t transfer quite as well. It’s difficult to perform through multiple screens with other performers while fighting lag.”
Though challenges arose, CoPA devised quick methods to adjust to the rest of the online semester.
“One of our faculty had the perfect response for me in March,” Ongaro said. “I asked him how he thought things were going to go, and he replied, ‘I’m not entirely sure, but we’re all creative people at CoPA. Thinking creatively is what we do best; we’ll find ways.’ And he was right.”