Students in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids program normally receive group music instruction. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they have transitioned to private online lessons.
“The day that really stands out for Raquel Whiting Gilmer, executive director of the Baltimore Symphony’s OrchKids program, was March 12, when their staff heard that Governor Larry Hogan would … announce the temporary closure of public schools,” writes Elizabeth Nonemaker in Sunday’s (4/12) Baltimore Sun. “ ‘We sprang into action and made sure all of our after-school kids had their instruments and supplies,’ Whiting Gilmer recalled…. OrchKids provided a crash course in the app they would be using to provide private online lessons to both staff and families, including a technology survey…. OrchKids primarily operates on a group lesson model [but] 90 percent of students in the afterschool program have signed up for online private lessons…. Whiting Gilmer also acknowledged the difficulty of the situation… ‘COVID-19 is a crisis, but Baltimore has lots of crises that have been going on for a while. Our families, our students, live in the neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by violence and challenges around food [and] housing security. These are issues that people are still facing—and there’s a pandemic.’ ” The article also reports on online music education at Baltimore’s Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University and at the Baltimore School of Music.
