In rural states, access to advanced, specialized music education for high school students can be sparse. A new initiative in the West Virginia University School of Music is changing that.
Faculty members at WVU have begun teaching virtual music lessons to students at John Marshall High School in Glen Dale and Spring Mills High School in Martinsburg. Students for the program were selected based on their intent to audition for the West Virginia All-State Orchestra.
“Many students don’t have the opportunity to have regular private lessons and the repertoire for state auditions is very demanding, so students can be left feeling overwhelmed learning the pieces on their own,” said Mikylah McTeer, associate professor of violin at WVU. “Because we have specialists on each instrument in the WVU School of Music, we’re in a position to provide these students with the right expertise and tools.”
McTeer started the program after visiting universities in Texas and Oklahoma with similar programs as part of a Big 12 Fellowship award from the WVU Office of the Provost.
“West Virginia may be smaller than Texas and Oklahoma, but most students would have to drive for hours to meet with our faculty for a lesson,” McTeer said.
Lessons were taught on violin, viola, cello and bass by WVU faculty members McTeer, Andrea Houde, Erin Ellis and Andy Kohn, respectively.
Each faculty member spent 15 minutes with each student while other students from the school audited the lessons.
“Typical music lessons would be an hour long, but we wanted to shorten that to make sure we could teach as many students as possible,” McTeer said. “Because it was a lesson for a specific audition with specific audition requirements, we could concentrate on the small details in a short period of time.”
Topics covered included articulation, tone, vibrato and tempo. For questions about basic instrumentation, like scales, faculty members pointed students to YouTube videos made by WVU faculty and students.
“School of Music faculty, along with some of our talented students, have made videos for almost every instrument,” McTeer said. “The videos are intended to give high school students
immediate access to technical and musical advice specifically related to the West Virginia All-State audition materials.”
Jeannine Sturm, orchestra director at Spring Mills High School, felt her students walked away from the lessons being more comfortable with their audition pieces and taking private instruction.
“My students appreciated the feedback they received from the WVU faculty,” Sturm said. “It was a good ice breaker for the students and I think it motivated them to practice even more for their upcoming auditions.”
In 2017, McTeer hopes to expand the program to all high school students throughout the state.
“We knew the music teachers at John Marshall and Spring Mills are tech-savvy from past visits to the schools, which made them the perfect BETA testers for the program,” McTeer said. “Now that we have worked out the kinks, we can’t wait to broaden our reach to more schools and give young West Virginians the opportunity to advance their music talents.”
-WVU-
bmd/12/23/16
CONTACT: Bernadette Dombrowski, College of Creative Arts
304.293.3397; Bernadette.Dombrowski@mail.wvu.edu
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