COLLABORATION AT A DISTANCE: A DISPATCH FROM DVAC

In which we discuss video platforms, sound files, obsessive re-recording, spouses walking behind you within camera range — as well as what we miss about live studio instruction, what remote instruction is teaching us, and how we’re prepared to move forward with — surprise — joy.

Collaboratively written by Shannon Cochran, Brenda Iglesias Zarco, Georgia Jacobson, Amy Johnson, Kathleen Kelly, Jordan Loyd, Teresa Perrotta, and Bin Yu Sanford

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March 2020…how many years ago was that?

Here in the CCM vocal and opera programs, as in conservatories across the country, students were preparing repertoire for summer apprenticeships as well as for the many performances still scheduled at school. We had four operas behind us and a fifth about to hit the stage, as well as dozens of orchestral concerts and recitals completed. As we headed into the last week before spring break, which would end with a Saturday scholarship competition before that much-needed pause, everything seemed to be flowing along in spite of troubling news about the spread of COVID-19.

You remember when things went into overdrive. On Tuesday of that last week, face-to-face instruction of classroom work was suspended until mid-April. We initially thought that studio instruction and recitals could continue with social distancing, but by the end of the week everything up to and including commencement was cancelled. In a matter of days, our little community was completely upended, with faculty and students scattered. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the great energizing and equalizing force of our campus — practice rooms, pianos, lounges, schedules, people — became unavailable to us. And we became faces on screens. Our students were still eager to learn, and we to teach. But, like everyone, we were all contending with everything from sketchy wifi to loss of income to stressful travel to apartment complex noise regulations. It was, as they say, a lot.

Reaching out to each other over various video platforms — and by phone, text, and email when those programs inevitably struggled — we saw something very familiar begin to happen in the midst of the chaos. Starting in a place of improvisation, we had to change our plans often and significantly. Of course the plans for the semester changed immediately, but our very ideas of how to teach and communicate at distance changed as we began to put them into practice.

Now that we’ve had a moment to debrief, and as we prepare for a variety of fall scenarios in Cincinnati, this small group wanted to share some of our discoveries and practices. There are so many more stories and points of view out there, and we don’t intend to speak for everyone. But we’re moved to write about what we learned together in case any of it resonates with you. We hope that you find some of this helpful and hopeful as we all face substantial unknowns together.

Who are we?

Faculty members

Amy Johnson, Associate Professor of Voice

Kathleen Kelly, Associate Professor of Opera Coaching

Amy’s students

Georgia Jacobson, mezzo

Jordan Loyd, tenor

Opera Artist Diploma students

Shannon Cochran, soprano

Teresa Perrotta, soprano

DMA candidates

Brenda Iglesias Zarco, mezzo

Bin Yu Sanford, pianist

Let’s begin back in mid-March with what we each had planned, and how that shifted as performances and summer gigs got cancelled.

Amy: I was getting ready to catch my breath with a brief spring break getaway after the usual 24/7 sprint through audition weekends, performances and directing an opera coupled with my students learning the results of their auditions and preparing for big things to come in the spring of 2020. My undergraduate opera class was ready to stage Mozart scenes upon return. Instead of all that, I pivoted to organizing a home studio, rewriting syllabi, and creating new class content for the scenes program. Communication with my students was key as we went bravely forward.

Bin: We were going to tackle the assignments for my summer engagement, which was canceled — as was the main stage opera, and my lecture recital. I had to make a lecture video from my home to finish the project.

Brenda: My original plan in March was to coach repertoire for my first DMA recital in April. I was also coaching the solo for Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, which turned out to be the last performance of the CCM Concert Orchestra before lockdown. And of course, we were preparing the Magic Flute, which also got canceled. I was still hoping to have my recital with a very limited public at the end of April. But it didn’t take long before we got the official announcement saying that all performances, including recitals, were canceled.

Georgia: I was to give my master’s recital in mid-April. We had completed most of the initial technical work on my program, and were primed for more specific dramatic work after spring break. Also, after spring break, I was ready to dive into preparing Mary Johnson in Fellow Travelers for Des Moines Metro Opera (my apprentice cover assignment), and to sing Zweite Dame in the CCM Magic Flute. My recital and the CCM opera were cancelled in March, and DMMO’s 2020 season was cancelled in mid-May.

Jordan: I was working on my Opera Theatre of St. Louis (OTSL) assignments, and on new arias for the upcoming audition season. Luckily, I had finished my graduate recital at the end of February and I was able to have a performance of the program I had been cultivating for the past year. The 2020 OTSL season was cancelled relatively early in the lockdown period, so we quickly moved on to strategizing about the future.

Kathy: I had just returned from two weeks of travel for recitals and masterclasses, all the while hearing more international reports of the virus’ spread. I got back in time for the week when everything changed. It was disorienting, hard to process and keep up with. When it became clear that all teaching was moving online, I traveled to my permanent home in Texas. I assumed I would be coaching as usual, only over Zoom or FaceTime, and that’s what I told my students we would do. I didn’t think through the enormous connectivity problems I would face out in a rural area — in that moment, I was only thinking of getting to where my husband was.

Shannon: We had a plan to explore new arias, prepare for a German recital, and to brush up for the upcoming performances of Die Zauberflöte, which was to be my debut as Königin der Nacht. As classes, rehearsals and performances were cancelled, it became obvious that we needed to shift focus. In our first Zoom meeting, we decided to shift our attention to language, nuance and the deep ‘homework’ of learning a piece. I said temporary farewell to one Queen and moved onto Zerbinetta, another Queen in her own right.

Teresa: I was doing an independent study of Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, which was contracted to sing for the 2020 Glimmerglass Festival season. Yes, the 2020 Glimmerglass Festival season was cancelled, along with CCM’s production of Die Zauberflöte, the 2020 Lotte Lenya competition finals, and a concert with the Lynx Project: Autism Advocacy Series, all of which I was scheduled to sing in.

When the restrictions and lockdown began, one of the major things we had to work with were the changes in students’ personal circumstances: not only location, but access to practice space, practice time, and instruments. Their privacy was affected, as was their control over their schedules, and all of this in very different ways.

Bin: My biggest concern was having no access to a real piano. I was used to practicing with a nice Steinway grand piano that is provided by CCM but had to get used to playing my old Clavinova. This also affected me with my own personal teaching studio as I could not meet them in person and have them hear the tone of a real instrument. This also led to a lack of privacy since, through the virtual setting, my students were given a window into my personal life from home. This included everything from my house decor to my husband’s wardrobe if he walked past the webcam. I would not say that there was much change in my control of schedule. While in school you have commitments to be in class and rehearsals and the online meetings or teaching periods just took its place. If anything, there was a bit more flexibility for rescheduling my lessons as everyone had a bit more open time.

Brenda: I was planning on going to Mexico at the end of April to visit my family and teach a workshop, but because of the new travel restrictions, my flight got canceled and I had no option but to stay in Cincinnati. Fortunately, I am an artist in residence at Twin Towers Senior community (this is a senior living community that supports some CCM students by offering housing), so I did not have to relocate. I have an electric piano at home, but I also share housing with a cellist, so my practice situation changed significantly. After the lockdown, access to my CCM office and the chapel at Twin Towers where I used to practice was denied for security and sanitary reasons. At first I had to readapt my schedule to practice and teach at my shared place. Luckily and after several petitions, I was allowed to go into an empty room in an uninhabited house of the senior community to practice.

Georgia: I stayed in Cincinnati for the tail end of the semester. My first inclination was to drive home to Minnesota, but with an elderly family (composed of people over the age of 60); this felt risky. I live alone in a building with four units. For the first few weeks of quarantine, two of the neighbors were working from home. I felt hesitant to practice at any time. I left notes for my neighbors but did not hear back from all of them, so I did not know if singing was interrupting important work. As quarantine continued, several neighbors relocated, so I had much more flexibility to practice — a huge relief. I essentially turned my dining room into a “Zoom studio” — moving a few bookshelves and the dining table, I created a space that I could depend on. I have a bendable smartphone tripod, and I encourage every singer to invest in one, as they are useful for recording audition videos and even bringing into lessons and coachings to video-record. Another tool that helped me was the Amazon Alexa speaker, as it can connect to either a computer and phone to play accompaniment recordings. The sound quality is acceptable, and the interface is clear. I established a practice routine around my online class schedule, but it was much easier to find motivation when my day had started on campus, instead of sitting at a dining room table.

Jordan: For me, there were no significant shifts in the beginning of lockdown outside of the stay at home orders. I was already living in Cincinnati in an apartment with my partner. Initially, I did not have the serenity of mind to practice because of the anxiety of the lockdown as well as not having a place to practice that wouldn’t disturb the surrounding tenants. I had access to a sufficient amount of technology, so I was able to absorb content related to my craft and that made me feel like I was contributing towards my future. The immediate loss of structure threw me motivationally and emotionally and sort of continues to do so. Once my partner and I moved into a house at the beginning of April, I was able to have my own practice space and was able to sing without caution of outside circumstances. That caused a significant and positive shift to my psyche and I felt I was able to actively work on long term goals more definitively. Three months into the quarantine, I am still struggling with wanting to actively work on my craft and towards short term goals such as upcoming auditions (whenever they will happen) and competitions. I have found that since I have the time and space to follow my own musical whims to express myself, I am fortunate to have a safe space in my home to do so. The only downside to this convenience is that it too becomes psychologically and emotionally another room that I am confined to and I often don’t feel the desire to spend very long practicing for that reason.

Shannon. My personal circumstances kept me in the same city, but my partner began working from home. I wasn’t always able to practice or work, especially sing, because of my partner’s meetings, as well as because of my neighbors’ needs in our apartment complex. Throughout the year, I had practiced at home, but knowing that everyone else was also home working remotely left me feeling guilty about making noise throughout the day. My partner had many various meetings throughout the day, because his programming office has clients in many countries. Some days I would try to warm up and he would have to ask me to wait until the next hour or later that day. However, I felt lucky to have an electric piano, so I could still use it for plunking out notes. But truly, even through a closed door I wasn’t able to really find the privacy to practice. It was difficult to feel free in my ‘own’ space knowing my partner was trying to work and my dog was wanting to play. Even in the moments when there was an opportunity to sing, my motivation to do so was barely there. It honestly took me a few weeks to feel like a new routine was developed.

Teresa: I went home to Orlando, Florida to be with my mom, sister, and my Great Pyrenees, Lady. My practice space moved from a conservatory practice room to the living room. Luckily, we are in a house and have a piano and music stand. My family is very supportive of my career, plus my little sister is pursuing music as well, so I know I have a safe space to practice (besides at dinner when they jokingly make fun of me messing up a run over and over). My mom is a fourth grade teacher, so her work went virtual overnight as well, and my sister was finishing her senior year of high school virtually. This means we had to coordinate scheduling not only for the loud singing, but internet connectivity.

As we started working remotely, we also had to start troubleshooting. Wifi speed and reliability were an issue. Sound quality and synchronization were problematic. And all of us were contending with major disruptions, disappointments, and anxieties. It was clear from the start that we could not simply “do our thing” online — we were going to have to learn new ways of communicating, listening, and organizing. We could take very little for granted, as opposed to when we were sharing familiar spaces and routines. Isolated and distanced from one another, we communicated much more often with one another, and in a variety of ways. We started to transition from all face-to-face contact to a combination of techniques for trading information, spoken, sung, and played.

Amy: I gave our support WebEx system the old college try but then had to opt for what worked. Zoom was much more consistent and my MT’s quickly taught me several tips regarding sound quality. Bandwidth for students in certain geographic areas or in households with multiple users was a challenge. We tried different configurations, tried to improve the singer’s set up each week and moved lesson times to help reception. I lengthened lessens a bit and allowed longer in between to allow for tech issues, but more importantly to really check-in with each person. By the third week CCM provided a better webcam for me but I was unable to acquire hardware for students. I also found that for the first time I was multitasking in lessons, using my PC for Zoom, a keyboard and my laptop for any supporting materials we needed. At first this felt “wrong” but I came to realize it was very beneficial given the circumstances. Several singers made some really wonderful discoveries by having to utilize more videos and audio recordings of themselves. They also had to become much more self-aware and able to articulate their observations because I could not put my hands on them to feel what was happening.

Bin: I very much enjoyed sharing sound files. It is always painful to listen to my recording but it forced me to do it. Before pressing the send button, I was able to criticize myself. One of the most prominent things I noticed was accuracy in rhythm. Recording myself forced me to repeat the same passage over and over in a pursuit of perfection, where in a live lesson the moment passes in an instant. It was an incredible tool for a disciplined practice. Some may find this to be obsessive but I think it adds to the self-awareness of details that I otherwise would have missed.

One of my favorite coaching sessions was a simple audio phone call about French diction. Through my past experience, I have a tendency to look at my instructor’s mouth in my diction coaching for imitating or getting closer to the right answer. But every stage (even a slight modification of your tongue or mouth) has to be verbally explained. From a student view, it was incredibly helpful. It requires me to ask more questions until I really get it (otherwise it sounds really wrong). This turned into me 100 percent absorbing the material or being totally lost and flustered. There was no more option to fake my understanding and forced me to come up with questions about how I was feeling compared to the sounds I was creating.

Brenda: I really liked working on text through Facetime. Pronunciation recordings helped me to have a great general idea, then in video calls we could work more in detail and depth. To work musically, I had a sound file of the piano accompaniment, so I could sing along with it, record a video of myself, and send it back for feedback. We tried multiple platforms: Zoom, FaceTime and Marco Polo, and also messages through cellphone/iPad: all of them were useful at some point in the process. We were flexible enough to try all of them and see which one worked best. I felt very productive, and learned a lot, from how to use all those new apps, to measuring my inner perception when recording against the recorded result.

Georgia. As more and more engagements were cancelled, it felt harder to plan ahead and goal-set in a usual way. I had to revise my longer-term goals with the “new normal”, and that planning too far ahead was quite stressful. I found that to be even more true as time in quarantine went on, and as research about live performance risks were further discussed. I had several specific goals that I was able to plan for, for example my scholarship competition audition submission. I felt that I was in total control of what was being recorded for submission, and had the freedom to re-record multiple times. However, this also had a downside — I was so bolstered by this new sense of control that does not exist in live auditions, I attempted to submit the “perfect” video. I ended up recording for far too long and really tired my voice. It was hard to figure out limits in this unfamiliar territory. In a regular audition situation, controlling self-judgement and letting go of any audition anxiety (once it is complete) is easier. I felt the nagging question of “What could I have done to improve the final product?” continue to bug me, even after submitting my video. In addition to the goals I set in private lessons, our virtual studio class encouraged the group to think about goal-setting and performance preparation. The studio was assigned chapters from Power Performance by Alma Thomas to discuss weekly over Zoom. The material dealt with performance anxiety and goal-setting in particular. I found this very helpful. In terms of voice lessons, Prof. Johnson and I were open with one another about the quality of sound in lessons and any technological difficulties. I was able to be very honest about my feelings in terms of motivation, struggling with establishing a structured routine, and worrying about cancelled gigs.

Jordan: I felt like we had already done a huge core of our foundational work before quarantine, so I felt like I scraped the bottom of the proverbial barrel to find things to work on for the remainder of the semester. I was just looking to finish the degree so that my brain and body could begin the process of digesting my entire time at CCM and, to an extent, my entire academic career (AKA most of my life). The adjustment into an online studio wasn’t terribly odd and sort of felt more comfortable because I was in my home as opposed to within the stress of a conservatory. I am already an extremely motivated and organised person when it comes to my passions in life, so I didn’t necessarily feel the need to be constantly in communication with my professors. If anything, we were able to use this time to start some new repertoire in the right direction for me to nurture and progress on my own time. Additionally, we used this remote time to clarify some more long-term goals as opposed to the (rather depressingly uncertain) short-term goals.

Kathy: My initial plan was to work over Zoom or Facetime. I know several people who have been teaching this way for years, but I never had to think about it myself — now I can properly appreciate their skill in communication and listening! I really struggled at first. I was in a remote area working from wireless data, often driving to my small town library to use their wifi signal from my car parked outside — very Wild West. The first few coachings were distressing to me because the tech issues were big, and my students so stressed. In order to make things go more smoothly while I figured it out, I made a switch: students would send me sound or video files of their singing (I provided video of me playing their accompaniment to back them), and I would send recorded commentary in response. When we met over Zoom or FaceTime after that, we would discuss the recordings and sometimes do some musical work together if the wifi gods were kind that day. Connectivity was a constant issue, so those real-time chats often focused on language work or other discussions. What started as a temporary fix turned out to be the way I preferred to keep going: the combination of synchronous and asynchronous work had really good results. I’m so grateful to the students’ flexibility and patience in this process. Had they not been so game, we would not have come so far.

Shannon: We communicated in different ways, via small video check-ins, audio recordings, and in person zoom calls or phone calls. We settled on musical work via recordings, and text/dialogue communication via FaceTime and/or phone calls.

We found that trying to sync up musically over video proved to be difficult. The timing was hard to get, it was hard to really hear and listen to one another. I noticed this in lessons as well. Things felt paused, or as if there was a giant weight that couldn’t be lifted past a certain point. There was difficulty in moving forward, because there was only so much that could be done musically in a current FaceTime or Zoom meeting. Honestly, I’m not sure that live video chat captures the true elements in each individual voice. When we changed to doing text via video and music through recording, it gave me the opportunity to really work on pieces in a more detailed capacity. During our video sessions, we could break down the text and really talk about translations. That might sound trivial but in fact, it allowed creativity to flourish and blossom. We had the opportunity to take the time to think about all the different ways to not only translate the text, but put it into my own words most authentically. In the hustle and bustle of conservatory life, there isn’t always enough time to really dig into the nitty-gritty of pieces, and I reconnected with the time it takes to really know and be a character, or to dissect the meaning behind poetry. Finally, working musically via recordings gave me the chance to practice and record when my living situation allowed it.

Teresa: I had audio tracks of all of my Don Giovanni excerpts (arias, trios, sextets, finales, etc.) except for secco recit. Coordinating secco recit with a recording is near impossible, and I play piano well enough to accompany myself if necessary. In the beginning of the week, we would plan what I should record and what we would coach. We ended up doing about an act every two weeks. I liked to send videos, so I could act out/sing the other characters parts and to watch my physical actions; not that this was ever a performance video. It should be noted, we had coachings before the lock-down and had made it through the opera, so this was our second time working through the score. I sent recordings of act one in the first few days, and received audio recording of notes. We would coordinate an hour or 30 minutes a week to FaceTime and go through specific spots “in-person.” In the second week, I would re-record the pieces after a few days of working on the ideas/concepts. I think we found the best way to coach by the end of the third/fourth week. It was best to focus our coachings on the recordings we sent back and forth. The FaceTime check- in ended up being 30 minutes to share feedback about the process and ask questions.

Several of the students in this group are DMA candidates who were also transitioning to teaching online.

Bin: I am running a studio of about 20 students currently. I definitely saw the value of recording myself for my students practice during the week at home, either to give an example or to give them a recording to play with. I also started to limit how many things I tried to fix at one time. Because the medium of Internet learning is limited to certain senses, I found it was easy to overwhelm my students by trying to fix too much too quickly. For my coachings as a student, I found myself talking less. The time delay sometimes makes it feel like someone is done talking and makes it easy to talk over one another. Allowing these extra long pauses in the conversation let the thought process of my professor come to its full conclusion and gave me the best chance of full comprehension.

Brenda: I continued teaching individual voice lessons and turned mygroup “voice class” into 20 minute individual coaching sessions. At first, I was only using Zoom, but when I discovered FaceTime through coaching my own repertoire, I started using that platform. For me, this was the best option in terms of audio and video quality, maybe because I did not have an external microphone. I asked my students to come prepared to their session with their backing tracks ready to go. I also sent a couple of recordings with text and/or musical strategies to some of them that needed it; I got this idea from my coachings as a student and discovered it worked really well specially when working on foreign languages like italian or with difficult musical passages. At the end of the semester, I asked my students to video record their songs and I put together a virtual recital on YouTube for them to share with. family and friends.

During this period, we were not able to have collaborative pianists in our voice lessons. With students using recorded tracks, I wondered how this would change our approach, and whether students would feel the technical results were affected.

Amy: Though we missed making music with our pianists, for me, this led to, perhaps, the most creative part of the experience. Each student had a different circumstance — from a parent who could play a lesson, to nothing at all. Somehow with only the two of us working together, I felt freed to really teach from a broader spectrum of my strengths. I was no longer robbing anyone’s collaborative time together so I could spend more time on polishing particular aspects. I addressed everything from fine points of articulation and style detailed career skills and performance techniques. I frequently asked myself, “What else can I give this student at this point to move them forward?”

Georgia: I really missed having my pianist in lessons, although it did allow us to focus on technical aspects for more of the lesson time. My pianist, Katie, and I had formed a wonderful relationship over this semester. I especially missed having her when beginning work on learning the role I was meant to cover at DMMO, as it was from a new opera and the accompaniment is quite difficult. I was so grateful that Katie knew my arias very well. In the accompaniment recordings she sent, she remembered specific details about how long fermatas were held, or any small pauses in phrasing for dramatic intent. This meant when singing with the recording, I didn’t need to change tempi to line up with the recording. As quarantine went on, I started a new virtual project with Professors Johnson and Kelly, and a fellow singer, Ryan Wolfe, to collaborate on a duet from Donizetti’s opera, La Favorita. At first I imagined that putting together a new piece with so much possibility for flexibility and rubato would be impossible in a remote format. However, our backing track was made after back and forth communication between pianist and singers, and this recording has been extremely helpful. Now I think that with clear and specific communication before a recording is made, even bel canto repertoire is not impossible at distance. I’m still curious to see how a virtual coaching in real time could work, as technology for this develops.

Jordan: Maybe this is a bit depressing, but I didn’t really mind not having a third party. Especially in a remote learning scenario, I would have felt like there were too many cooks in the kitchen when dealing with the intimacies of vocal technique. I felt like we were able to work quicker on certain technical pillars because I knew my music well enough to perform it and knew to ask the right questions for what I needed. Either going acapella with a keyboard giving me pitches or singing with a pre-recorded accompaniment track worked out pretty well for me.

The biggest surprise for all of us was this: there are elements of how we worked together during this period that we would like to hang on to, even as distancing and isolation begin to lift. There were also, of course, things we missed, that are not to be replicated online.

Bin: I miss working on tone colors. That is such a big part of my job to either match the sounds of the orchestra or to find a nice balance with the singer that I am working with to support. This is near impossible with my DIY set up of recording at home. But, having to listen to my own recordings and analyze them has been very valuable and I plan on continuing this practice in the future. I was surprised how well the diction part of the lesson worked. It made me start to think about how my physicality works instead of simply trying to mimic the sounds I am hearing. I feel like I need to think this way more to be a more accomplished vocal coach down the road.

Brenda: I miss hearing the music live, and the prompt reaction and collaboration that happens when teaching or coaching, the immediate feedback on both sides. There is a very special connection when making live music with someone else, and there is no way to replace that. However, I found that audio recordings were very useful and learned a great deal when I could instantly go back and listen/ watch carefully and correct more consciously. I enjoyed having my professor’s recorded feedback, because when in doubt, I could easily go back to the recording and compare it with what she was doing, which allowed me to make detailed notes and improve my own performance. I was not expecting this to happen, but from here on I will keep sound files as guides to my previous face to face coachings and I will use them to compare details with my own audio files too. I plan to do this for my own students as well. I’ll continue to video record myself on a regular basis, not only to improve my self-perception and awareness but also to ask for feedback from my voice professor and coaches to improve my work. I will suggest the same to my students. It will be beneficial to their own process.

Georgia. I was pleasantly surprised by the way virtual lessons went, although if it were for a longer period of time it would be hard to be as positive. I assumed that latency and poor sound quality would hamper us, but once we settled on Zoom, lessons were high enough quality to receive helpful feedback. I missed the detailed technical training that was easier to focus on in person, specifically as regards jaw and tongue tension, which are not always visible over a webcam. I try to focus on posture and support in my lessons, and I really missed having my teacher in person to physically check in on this. I also noticed that I felt the impulse to become more performative/less genuine with my acting over video chat.

Through the help of the book discussed in our studio class, I made a five and ten year plan (career and personal life) during this time, and I intend to share with my professor and to hone in these goals, even with the set-back of the pandemic.

Jordan: I miss the immediacy of working on technical elements without any kind of delay. I also just missed having another person in the room. When the student-teacher relationship is functioning at its best, lessons are an incredibly intimate and personal journey of building technique, artistry, and autonomy. I really crave those interactions with my mentors, so being connected in such a non-personal way through devices was a bit of a bummer. Surprisingly, in regards to technical advancement, I didn’t find too much of a difference between face-to-face and remote lessons. Perhaps that was because I was finishing my degree and had no immediate events (auditions, performances, etc.) to stress over. I, of course, will prefer face-to-face lessons and coachings but this has given me faith that remote learning can actually be useful in the future. I will probably start self-taping/recording more and sending those recordings to my teacher just so there is a more “accurate” voice recording to tweak technique.

Shannon. One of the major benefits I see is the ability to communicate and to continue to work with my ‘circle of trust.’ In this career, musicians often have to move from one place to another, and they may have to find another coach in their area, another voice teacher, etc. But being forced, really, to work in this way has shown just how musicians can continue to work with their preferred circle of mentors in a way that can be more than a 6 month check-in. They can reach out to get accompaniment tracks, to get feedback on a new aria, to talk textual analysis and linguistics. There is possibility and potential to continue honing a musician’s craft with those that they work best with, in a new, albeit different capacity.

Teresa: I found our system of coaching was highly effective, sometimes more so than in person.

The pros:

1. I could record when I wanted to. If I was feeling tired or not in the right headspace, I could just record a different day. There was no pressure. If I didn’t feel like I would make the timeline I would just stay in contact and we would adjust accordingly.
2. 2. I was able to take in and work on the ideas/concepts for multiple days. Often, in coachings we have to make quick changes to move on in the one hour slot. This way, I can listen to notes as much as I want and can take the time to fix and accurately work on the tasks. I found less time was spent repeating things we discussed before in this format than in our normal coachings.
3. 3. It forced me to listen/watch myself more. It is hard for anyone to observe themselves performing, and often we avoid it. I always listened back before sending. If I felt like I could do a certain part better, I would re-record. This helped me coach myself before the actual coaching and not waste time.
4. Both pros/cons:
5. 1. Recording tracks. Prof. Kelly and I had already worked through Don Giovanni in person, so her backing tracks reflected that familiarity. Even so, a track can never “breathe” as a live pianist can. I learned to just accept at certain moments I wouldn’t be exactly together with the track. I practiced other tempi by myself to build in flexibility. Using tracks was important for my intonation: I think harmonically, so my intonation is better when I’m not singing a capella
6. 2. Different time schedule. It’s not just a one-hour a week deal, it’s shorter chunks of time throughout the week. It takes a certain discipline.
7. The cons:
8. 1. Internet Connectivity. It worked well overall, but there were a few delays every so often.
9. I enjoyed this way of working specifically with role prep. I would love to incorporate sending recordings back and forth. This way of coaching is highly effective, as long as both parties keep an open and honest communication.

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Can we start to draw any conclusions after a few months of working at a distance?

Maybe this one: remote learning and collaboration are not substitutes for the face-to-face version, but their own kinds of practice, with their own advantages. Ultimately, we began to discover those advantages through constant communication and flexibility, working together.

We don’t yet know how exactly things will play out in the fall, but we wanted to tell you that we have found a significant measure of confidence going forward. As Jordan said, “I, of course, will prefer face-to-face lessons and coachings but this has given me faith that remote learning can actually be useful in the future.”

Ultimately, a fusion of what we are learning to do during this moment in time coupled with traditional studio teaching could be transformative to our practice. And it’s in that practice that we will find the next steps for our art. Even with more time to plan and better ideas about how to use our technology, we’re confident that the way forward will be based in human connection, personal discipline, and the joy of collaboration. Just like always.

Thank you for reading! What is your story?