Núcleo Corona at home!

Until last spring most students attended 2 or 3 weekly activities, which included group lessons, sectional rehearsals, and full-orchestra rehearsals. But this group-learning format is not feasible online, due to synchronization issues related to different internet connection speeds. We have found that the only way students will be able to continue with their learning is by receiving individual lessons online. Happily, we have noticed that even with the limitations of this format, the few students we started teaching this way in the spring made significant improvements to their playing in only 3 months. We have also heard from many parents that these few lessons were the only times that someone outside of their household could give their children individual attention and that made a significant impact on their mood in these difficult times.

Our main goal is to take this challenge as an opportunity to provide our students with one-on-one instruction, with the objective of preparing them thoroughly for the next school year, when we hope to be back playing together.  In the meanwhile, we are keeping some online activities to maintain our community in touch: We are producing 4 streamed concerts which will include "virtual orchestra" recorded pieces, solo performances and recordings of past concerts.  As a core part of this year's work, too, students will participate in monthly zoom moderated conversations on music and social justice, which will also frame their vision for CYMP and its orchestras for the next 5 years. 

This fall we managed to recruit 12 new volunteer teachers from all over the United States to help us provide 40 individual 30-minute lessons that our students needed. That, along with our usual teaching staff, is allowing the Corona Youth music Project to provide close to 100 individual remote lessons per week, from October 2020 to June 2021.

However, by switching from a few violin group classes to these many individual lessons, as well as incurring in new unprecedented expenses (Zoom subscription, new music notation software, as well as a new assessment software to support our distance learning process) the cost per student has increased slightly.