BY ZOE STINSON
We would like to welcome Zoe in her first feature story as a CutCommon contributor!
Update: These events have unfortunately been postponed due to new lockdown measures in Victoria. Check back in again to find out about updated performance opportunities.
Interlude. The time and space to listen. The time to hear with a different perspective. The time to breathe and collect.
An interlude is a pause, it’s a space between.
This is how Jared Yapp describes an interlude in a piece of music.
An interlude is where violist Jared now finds himself, and is the title of the festival he is curating: Interlude – A Festival of Ideas for the Australian National Academy of Music.
The festival, to be held from 17-19 June, is the culmination of ANAM’s pioneering COVID recovery response, the Seventh Semester program. It is a chance for students who missed performances last year to develop as musicians and as artists, and to celebrate the achievements of the Seventh Semester students who were critically involved in the program’s creation.
To understand the festival, one must understand Seventh Semester. ANAM’s Performance Program is typically a three-year program, made up of six semesters. Students have access to world-class teachers, guest artists, performance opportunities, and to each other as fellow musicians.
But thanks to COVID, nothing is typical. The student experience changed. As classes were moved online, performances were cancelled, and the community physically disbanded.
“We really were struggling to not see each other, let alone not play together,” ANAM violinist Phoebe Masel says.
“You just can’t do a quartet rehearsal on Zoom.”
As third-year students, Phoebe and Jared were set to graduate from ANAM at the end of 2020. Their final year promised leadership, performance, and audition opportunities opened to them through their seniority. It was supposed to be an important year of lasts.
Instead, Phoebe says, “COVID meant the cancellation of everything I had planned […] and that was really devastating”.
In recognition of this loss, mid-last year the ANAM administration proposed extra time for third years as a potential reparation.
Phoebe was pleased. She thought ANAM had recognised how hard lockdown had been, and how decimated the industry was. She and the other third years operated under the belief they had an extra semester to look forward to.
But the solution didn’t come easily: early financial barriers meant ANAM didn’t yet have the funds to commit to an additional semester.
“I was so close to giving up,” Phoebe says. “Basically, I was like, do I just give up the violin?”
“It would have been really sad if my time at ANAM had ended with a Zoom class.”
So, Phoebe and Jared rallied their colleagues to demonstrate the importance of more time for their third-year experience. They organised a meeting with the rest of their cohort and together drafted a letter circulated to ANAM’s general manager, artistic director, and board chair, asking for more time.
“I just couldn’t see a way of going into the profession […] I couldn’t envisage getting a job when people who’d been in the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra their whole lives weren’t working,” Phoebe says.
After the letter was received, the ANAM administration and Phoebe organised a meeting with all the third years. Everyone was given a chance to speak.
“I was so moved by it, because so many people, especially from third year, really got vulnerable about how difficult 2020 was as a musician, as a studying musician,” Phoebe says.
From here, ANAM gave each student a chance to meet with the administration to discuss what an ideal seventh semester would look like for them.
After hearing these musicians’ stories, ANAM contacted its donor community who rallied behind the initiative, providing the financial support needed to facilitate the Seventh Semester project.
ANAM was able to open the doors to the program: a fully funded, tailor-made semester designed to suit each musician, and to suit the reality of the music industry they will soon be stepping into.
“So many people, especially from third year, really got vulnerable about how difficult 2020 was”
Throughout the semester, which is now approaching its half-way point, students are welcome to attend normal classes, which have resumed in person, have access to eight lessons with teachers outside the ANAM faculty, and can be rostered on to perform.
In fact, Phoebe and Jared spoke to me in between stretches of their nation-wide tour with Musica Viva.
ANAM also pioneered a ‘conversation’ series, where the 11 students sit in conversation with mentors including recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey and cellist Richard Vaudrey.
In the Seventh Semester conversations, students are encouraged to reflect on things like their aspirations, the industry, making a living wage, and are given access to musicians and artists from diverse career paths.
The purpose of the program is to give students the opportunity to complete a project that is tailored to their creative desires, and to expand their performance skills into the realm of curation and organisation.
Interlude – A Festival of Ideas is the collaborative result of the students’ projects.
“I would like to see it as being sort of a touchstone for judging the kind of creative and artistic sentiments of our generation”
Phoebe and Jared are both incredibly excited for their concerts, and are grateful ANAM offered them a chance to be heard.
“I think it really had a big impact on the ANAM staff members that were there, because they maybe hadn’t realised what we were going through,” Phoebe says.
“Putting it all out on the table and listening, we all learnt, is the key here; listening to each other.”
Listening is now the theme of the festival. Listening to ourselves, to each other, to the environment, and to music. All the concerts, of which there are nine, have listening at their core, and many include non-standard repertoire. Examples include minimalist staple In C by Terry Riley (which Jared tells me you cannot play without listening to your fellow musicians), and Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations.
There will also be two conversation pieces as part of the festival, hosted by Genevieve Lacey.
“I would like to see it as being sort of a touchstone for judging the kind of creative and artistic sentiments of our generation. So, you go to this festival, and you see what’s really going on right now, on the ground,” Jared says.
Kate Mazoudier, ANAM’s deputy general manager, judges Seventh Semester and its festival as “ANAM at its best”. She says ANAM heard students who expressed their grief at the loss of performance and employment opportunities, and she is proud that ANAM was nimble enough to listen and respond to the needs of the students in a completely changed landscape.
The festival project has empowered students to develop their own future projects, enriching them with skills in curation, marketing, HR, philanthropy, and operations, that ANAM will now incorporate into its standard program.
The experience of being heard by the administration empowered students with a voice.
“These musicians are now more equipped to be able to think, to create their own programs, their own work,” Kate says.
“There was a lot of nurturing and care in keeping them, giving them the time and space to think about their future as artists.
“We’re very proud of it […] it was a really invigorating and positive experience. 2020 just threw all the rules out.”
Jared agrees, saying the uncertainty of last year gave him the ability to let go of the planning and expectations that constrained him and the industry.
“The dream of the symphony orchestra – everyone going to the symphony orchestra every week to watch Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach – that’s not happening. Let that go. Let’s actually listen to what’s happening,” he says.
“The thing that I am loving about my seventh semester is that it is teaching us all that it’s not only okay to not have a plan and an ambition for the future, but actually, it’s better.”
It’s better, he says, because when you have a plan, it’s easier to say no to other opportunities. Instead, Jared is saying yes to everything, and is enjoying the opportunity to think deeply and engage new skills while curating the festival.
Phoebe says Seventh Semester is helping her readjust to an uncertain future, and is giving her “the guts” to do something on her own.
Six months ago, Phoebe had no plan and it terrified her. Now it excites her.
Visit the ANAM website to learn more about the Seventh Semester program and events. Read more stories from the Seventh Semester musicians on the ANAM blog.
Shout the writer a coffee?
[purchase_link id=”24192″ text=”Add to Cart” style=”button” color=”red”]
Zoe is a freelance journalist and Master of Journalism student at the University of Melbourne. She is the editor of Sexpression Mag, and has been published in The Guardian Australia and The Citizen.
If you like, you can say thanks to Zoe for volunteering her time for Australian arts journalism. No amount too much or little 🙂
Images supplied. Pay what you like securely via PayPal; 80% goes to our writer and 20% to our volunteer editor.
