Staying on the Same Page, Virtually

The Delaware County Youth Orchestra at their November concert. Photo: John Tobias

“There is no substitute for actually being together,” says Andrew Hauze, conductor and music director of the Delaware County Youth Orchestra (DCYO) and a senior lecturer at Swarthmore College. The COVID-19 pandemic has cancelled rehearsals, so he is finding creative ways to help his musicians continue to make music. 

DCYO has 103 musicians, mostly high-school students from Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. Usually, the group meets every Tuesday night and performs concerts in November, February, and May. This year, however, they were only able to give two of the concerts, and had to give up on preparing music for a May concert.

Normally, the ensemble’s main goal is to learn how to listen to each other and play better music. They can’t focus on that now, partly because web-platform time lags make it difficult to play together virtually. But that doesn’t mean they’re not making good use of their time. Hauze has been sending his musicians weekly emails with practice tips, information about enrichment activities, and inspirational videos from members of the Philadelphia Orchestra playing and discussing music. 

The orchestra members are also continuing to study music theory and learn about composers, and Hauze is using YouTube to help them learn and prepare new pieces. Each week, on DCYO’s YouTube channel, he posts a video of himself going measure-by-measure through the music he has them working on, explaining each piece’s history and providing an analysis of how it works musically. Currently, he is coaching them through Gershwin’s “Symphonic Picture from ‘Porgy and Bess’” and Elgar’s “Wand of Youth Suite” No. 1. And he is piecing together clips submitted by individual members so that he can produce a video of everyone playing together. 

Despite the difficulties of the situation, Hauze finds hope in the way it’s giving the musicians a deeper appreciation of how incredible it is when they are able to play together. “I always think of an orchestra like a little miracle,” he says. 

Mira Patel is a junior at Strath Haven High School.