Learning
Music and Theatre Students Learn and Perform Remotely
Muskingum University’s Music and Theatre faculty are bringing the studio, stage, and ensembles to their students through multiple virtual technologies.
Associate Professor of Music and Music Department Chair Dr. David Turrill explains that applied music lessons – private instruction on an instrument or voice – are being delivered through a video chat platform such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype, or Facetime. Muskingum’s staff collaborative pianist Caroline Heading, is recording piano accompaniment and emailing it to students who will be performing juries or recitals this spring. The students will record themselves in performance, singing or playing along to the recorded accompaniments.
Dr. Timothy Sarsany, Interim Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities, is holding weekly sectionals with the Concert Choir via Microsoft Teams, along with providing marked scores for study and practice tracks. For each piece, students send recordings of themselves singing their parts to a video of Dr. Sarsany conducting. The recordings will be “stacked” on top of each other to form the virtual choir for an audio concert, featuring three songs by the Concert Choir and two songs by the Chamber Singers. “Even though we are all ‘scattered to the winds,’ there is still a strong sense of community and great joy in seeing each other’s faces and still making music together,” Dr. Sarsany notes.
Although the Southeastern Ohio Symphony Orchestra Concert planned for this spring has been postponed, Professor of Music Dr. Laura Schumann’s SEOSO students are continuing to listen to and practice their music, as well as writing program notes for their favorite piece on the program. Her students are also using YouTube assignments featuring alternative string performers to build their skills in fun areas such as improvisation and creating pop-style music and riffs.
In Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Dr. Rianne Gebhardt’s Musical Theatre Ensemble class, students have been continuing their work on character development virtually, as well as using scene analysis of vocal and theatrical elements in existing online video productions to help spark creativity.
Professor of Theatre Dr. Diane Rao shares that in the Theatre Department, improvisation classes have been meeting synchronously on Teams and doing improv scenes and exercises in video chat. Students in Scene Painting, Technical Production, and Stage Makeup classes were given materials kits before they left campus and are completing their hands-on projects at home with the guidance of instructor videos.
The department also keeps their Theatre majors connected through a weekly Teams video chat, fun social media Theatre challenges that can be completed at home, such as creating costumes with found objects, and a weekly Friday Spotlight Student Feature. In addition, the department created a video "Muskie Theatre Space Tour" that can be shared with prospective students.
Read more on how other faculty across campus are responding with Muskie creativity and innovation!
