Winthrop’s Department of Music has a new website, Coping with COVID, which lays out for students the protocols and plans that the department has in place for the fall semester. With these guidelines, the music department has made sure that everyone will be able to continue the program while also being safe.
The site includes information about how they will practice social distancing to stay safe. Many ensembles will have to “meet outdoors” and others will meet in larger rooms like the “Barnes Recital Hall and the choral rehearsal room,” according to the website.
Because of social distancing guidelines, typically large ensembles will still meet but will have to do so “in smaller subgroups of 8-12 students at a time.”
For music classes that are still meeting inside, cleaning supplies will be available throughout the classrooms and students will have to clean their workspaces before entering and leaving class. The music department is also offering students options to do some classes virtually.
One big change to the music department’s course offerings is the removal of the jazz ensemble this semester, which the website says was done to “reduce overlap
in student participation.”
The department also had to make changes to plans that had already been made for the fall. Many recitals and performances were already set, but when COVID-19 cases continued to rise, those plans had to be changed. According to the Coping with COVID website, “no live performances for audiences will be offered on campus” this fall. Many of the performances and recitals will instead be recorded or live-streamed for the public to see.
Events that had been planned ahead of time for the music program had to be rescheduled. Elisa Koehler, Chair of the Music Department, said that the “Winthrop Wind Symphony tour originally scheduled for the fall semester has been postponed until next year.”
Some events even had to be canceled.
“The Invitational Band Clinic that usually takes place on campus in November has been canceled for this year,” Koehler said.
Another thing that is changing about the program is the way students can use practice rooms. Normally a group of people can get a practice room together, but this will not be the case this year. Instead, practice rooms will be “restricted to one student per room,” according to the website.
The music department is actively working on an online room reservation system and the practice rooms will have the same cleaning protocols as group classrooms.
To help out their students the music department also added a list of recommended equipment to prepare for classes. To see this full list, as well as more information about the protocols Winthrop’s
Department of Music is taking this semester, you can visit their Coping with COVID website.
Photo by Tate Walden
