By Professor Liam Viney
The primary impact of 2020/COVID-19 on the UQ School of Music has been increased pressure in all domains: change and adaptation in teaching, lost opportunities in research, and decreased engagement opportunities. Within an ever more constrained budget, there’s limited capacity for strategic initiatives. We have had to be more creative than usual in rallying our resources to ensure performance and engagement activities occur in 2021.
Staff morale has taken a hit, with a difficult new teaching environment exacerbated by a creeping sense of guilt and vulnerability over the expensive nature of music education. We are working towards restoring a sense of belonging and community and have made inroads this year.
In teaching, we face complex decisions fuelled by practical and philosophical concerns around developing musical knowledge in an external mode, and challenges in how to maintain equity of access and experience across the student cohorts. We suspect we will need significant central support to ensure our online offerings are internationally competitive but are concerned that we will have to achieve this using current budgets. One bright spot is that we discovered we could do more online than we thought, and there are even some pedagogical advantages to certain strategies adopted in some contexts. But this mode does have a limit, and we are all aware of the way in which the laws of physics prevent us from rehearsing ensembles in online and remote locations effectively.
In research, the inability to travel has been an obvious hindrance for many projects, not to mention the significant impact of not being able to mount the majority of live performance activity. Further challenges include obstacles in disseminating the results of research projects (for example, in the absence of in-person conferences) and the difficulties in connecting with individuals and institutions overseas because of temporary closures and reduced working hours (such as in archives, libraries, university departments/schools/conservatoria). There is a renewed sense of the importance of connecting our work to the broader context and world around us, but at the same time a deep concern about the lack of consideration at the government level to the impact of the pandemic on musical culture. This impacts both our research and teaching enterprises, as staff and students are anxious about what the future holds.
Overall, there’s a sense that we will survive this period, and that we have it within our grasp to thrive in due course. The key to this appears to be re-creating a sense of community, belonging, and cohesion as a necessary starting point.
Professor Liam Viney is performer and scholar with interests in piano performance, especially duo pianism, and new music. As a performer Liam has collaborated with dozens of composers, ensembles, and symphony orchestras. He is a leading authority on Australian duo piano music, with a focus on the collaborative creation of new musical practice and thought. Liam has commissioned and premiered dozens of new works for piano, two pianos, and chamber ensembles from composers in Australia and the United States. He has been featured on eight commercial CDs on labels such as ABC Classics, Tall Poppies, and Naxos. He has served on the keyboard faculty of California Institute of the Arts. Liam is currently Professor and Head of School at the School of Music, University of Queensland.