Sequester Fest or What I’ll Do This Summer
Eric Stern wears a lot of hats - composer, conductor, music arranger, music supervisor. He is also an associate professor of composition at Berklee College of Music. Because who needs to sleep? Read about his relationship with teaching and, more important, his relationship with his students.
Let me first say, I’m not complaining - which is unusual for me. I’m a championship complainer. During the current crisis I’m uncharacteristically in a “count my blessings” mode because I realize I’m simply inconvenienced. I’m not sick, I’m not unemployed (really!) and I have a family that hasn’t killed me after weeks of co-confinement. My wife and I are both college profs, and when we transitioned to teaching arts and performance classes online, the task was initially daunting. It still is, to a degree. The essence of musicianship is togetherness. If you don’t like working with people, be a painter or a novelist. Music requires presence, synchronicity, proximity, inspirational interaction. But slowly another reality became clear. My students, even though they shared my doubts and frustration, came to rely on the consistency of our classes together. Despite everything the majority of them were there in my Zoom windows every class, in contact with each other - and on schedule. The regularity, once boring and off-putting, became a treasured asset in times of uncertainty. We passed prerecorded videos back and forth, shared screens online, listened to performances, discussed technique, stylistic traditions, score preparation - anything you can do that doesn’t require synchronicity. I learned a new term: latency. I always thought that had a dire psychological implication, but I now know it’s the “lag” in internet transmission that keeps you from working together, singing along, discussing minutia, doing anything in real time. It’s the thing that makes you long for being in the room together and not miles - or even continents away. Still, I’m grateful. I have a job - for now - and I got to spend all that time with students I care about, talking about the things I love, and holding virtual hands with them during an increasingly perplexing time.
School’s out now. I don’t teach in the summer, but I’m already gearing up to continue remotely in the fall, even though no decision has yet been made. I’m also orchestrating, working on music file conversions for the college (long story…) and reading. Reading! I’d almost forgotten what that was.
Oh yes, I’m also trying very hard not to read the papers or watch the news. I haven’t been terribly successful; I have a subscription to online editions of the New York Times and the Washington Post. I have to remind myself not to linger on the news channels on my radio when I do the dishes, even the BBC World Service. The menace of the virus is nothing compared with the terror that is our president and the people who support him. The virus may thin our ranks. The current administration (with the complicity of a significant portion of the American populace) could literally wipe us out. That’s the stuff that keeps me awake at night. No matter what your politics, there can be no doubt we are careening into an uncertain future ill-prepared, unwilling to heed the advice of those with knowledge, and putting our “faith” in the unsubstantiated view that nothing horrible can happen to us because God is on our side. Four years ago we had an intelligent, thoughtful and thoroughly well-meaning president that somehow was a “disaster” according to so many. Now we have this.
All I can say is thank goodness for music - and for my students. I’m not sure I could have made it without them.
www.ericstern.net