The recapitulation of music

BY COLLIN LIOU Staff Reporter

The return to in-person learning strikes a positive note for the performing arts, signaling how the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are only temporary. After over a year back to in-person learning, Sequoia’s Band, Advanced Band, Orchestra, Piano and Chorus classes, as well as its musical groups such as the Treble Clefs, have had a chance to regain their footing and develop new plans for this school year.

During and immediately following distance learning for the 20202021 school year, participation in Sequoia’s musical groups dropped by as much as 50 percent due to the impossibility of having live, communal rehearsals and performances. This loss in numbers can be explained through students’ experiences with the fundamental barriers of creating music in groups during distance learning.

“People just don’t care [about singing] in that time when you’re not allowed to go out and even talk to people. You obviously aren’t singing to people and you kind of lose that desire or love for singing,” Adam Bobich, senior and member of Chorus, said.

While Bobich found his own interest in music dwindling during distance learning, the return to in-person learning has revitalized it.

“I wasn’t planning on taking

[Chorus] another year, I just wasn’t really into the class,” Bobich said. “And then I came for junior year, which was no longer [distance learning], and I actually found that I really liked it. And from there my love for music kept growing.”

This revival of interest in singing can also be seen through increased participation in Sequoia’s Treble Clefs, a selective acapella group headed by junior Sofia Rava.

Interest in the group had dwindled during distance learning and the year immediately following; however,Treble Clefs has rebounded this year.

“After [distance learning], the first year we didn’t get that many auditions,” Rava said. “And then this year [...] we got 10 to 15 rather than two to five [...] and even more people coming to me and asking about auditions. So it definitely settled down a lot last year, and then this year there’s been this big boom of people who want to join.”

Still, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Sequoia’s music program continue to persist since rosters for Orchestra, Band, Advanced Band, and Chorus have not fully recovered. Interestingly, the drop in roster size for music classes only occurred in the years after distance learning. Jane Woodman, Guitar teacher and director of Sequoia’s Band and Advanced Band, prescribed a multitude of factors that led to the downturn last year and this year.

“Last year was a little bit of a funky year just because we were back but there were tons of protocols,” Woodman said. “All these transitional things were going on and we lost some people. Also, I think I had 30 Seniors graduate, which is just gigantic. So with so many people not coming back for multiple reasons, and also the incoming freshman class was a little bit smaller than pre-pandemic because some of the middle schools lost enrollment in band, the numbers just in this particular year just went astronomically down.”

If Woodman kept the two bands separate this year, she would have had two small groups with strange distributions of instruments. So, she decided to combine the bands.

Still, she remains optimistic for the future of Sequoia’s music program.

“It was a little weird to see all the numbers drop, but I think that’s happening in a lot of programs and we’ll build them back up,” Woodman said.

Her optimism stems from how Sequoia’s music groups now have access to a crucial aspect of performing arts which was absent during distance learning: community.

Sequoia’s Orchestra director and Piano and Chorus teacher, Othello Jefferson, feels refreshed to be back in person where students can form connections and grow as a community.

“It’s wonderful just to get a chance to connect,” Jefferson said.“In a class where we’re learning how to perform, having the objective ears and eyes of a teacher—having even the objective ears and eyes of people around you—when you’re talking and learning and connecting is crucial.”

Rava echoed similar sentiments about the Treble Clefs, citing how having a community has a positive influence on the group’s ability to make music.

“It does bring me a lot of joy to go there every week and meet with all of [the Treble Clef members] and see them and try to bring a community together,” Rava said. “We’ve actually created connections, which does make us sound a lot better as a group because we are able to hear each other, because we’re able to talk with each other and talk through what’s going on.”

In addition, the instructional value from music classes and groups has improved tremendously since distance learning.

“[My piano students] sent me little videos of them actually playing, but it’s not the same as actually standing next to the students and saying, ‘This, I think you could fix. That was great that you did that, I think it was wonderful,’” Jefferson said. “I was able to give the comments after the fact, but not in real time.”

One of Jefferson’s Chorus students, Paolo Marasco, felt the same way.

“[Chorus] is more of a community than it is anything else,” Marasco, a senior, said.

After regaining their footing last year, Sequoia’s music classes and groups have many new plans for this school year.

For one, Jefferson and Woodman are resuming the annual Sequoia Music Festival in March, where they expect around 10 ensembles from surrounding schools to perform at Sequoia.

In addition, Woodman plans to reconnect with the music programs at middle schools such as Kennedy Middle School and Central Middle School. This will help drive up participation in middle school ensembles as well as increase the incoming freshman classes for Sequoia’s music program.

Rava also opened up auditions for the Treble Clefs to anyone this year. Previously, the group had solely consisted of femininepresenting girls with feminine voices

“As someone who is pretty lenient in my own gender identity, I felt weird about restricting someone’s pronouns for the group, or restricting the way that someone’s voice sounds because you can’t control how your voice sounds,” Rava said. “If someone wanted to be in the group but couldn’t just because of the tone of their voice, I just didn’t feel like I was diversifying or being accepting towards everyone and creating the community that I wanted to create for Treble Clefs.”

While the COVID-19 pandemic took a toll on Sequoia’s music program, it only served to demonstrate the perseverance of students, teachers, and communities to continue to create music through adversity.

“We sometimes take for granted just how wonderful it is to just be in the same room, to be able to interact and connect and talk and share on a daily basis,” Jefferson said. “The chance to just perform with each other, perform for each other and actually share your abilities or share your growth in those abilities is amazing.”