Courtesy photo The Nashua Community Music School will be starting virtual instruction on Monday.

NASHUA – For music students who are home as a result of school closures, private music instruction may be temporarily curtailed by a few measures.

And as Nashua Community Music School was forced to cancel all private instruction, group classes, all music outreach programs and their winter recital, next week they’ll be going virtual with home music instruction.

Tori Caruso, assistant director for NCMS, announced that several hundred students have been impacted by the school’s closing. In terms of finding a different avenue for music education for its students, Caruso said it was a tough decision for she and executive director Lindsay Rinaldi.

“Last Friday, we hunkered down, to talk about options and what the plan would be moving forward,” Caruso said. “We knew we had to do something, and fully shutting down wasn’t an option we wanted.”

Caruso said they wanted to ensure their teachers still had work, as so many people across the board were losing their jobs as the COVID-19 crisis continues.

“We had heard of a few other music organizations that were doing virtual classes,” she said. “Lindsay works for SNHU as well, and they had already started implementing their remote lessons and a lot of other schools had mentioned that they were thinking of that model, so we took our lead from them.”

Caruso estimated that somewhere between 150-200 students take private lessons. She also said that for many of their music teachers, who have been teaching for 30 or 40 years, it’s “been a transition.”

“We’re all kind of taking the approach of ‘we’re going to learn as we go with this,'” she said. “It’s going to be different – especially for our teachers who have been teaching for so many years – we’re asking them to fully relearn the way they teach in a matter of days. But our staff has been amazing. We’re so grateful that they’ve been on board with us.”

Caruso said they are eager to reopen, when they can, as the school also impacts so many with their outreach programs, which includes private lessons and group classes at some different schools in the community; groups at the 21st Century program, an after-school program at Title 1 Nashua public schools; private lessons at the Hollis Montessori school and World Academy in Nashua; and music groups at two head-start programs in Nashua.

“We also have a couple of groups with Opportunity Networks, a nonprofit that provides services for adults with developmental disabilities,” she said. “We’ll be anxious to return to all of that.”

In the meantime, NCMS will roll out virtual classes on Monday.

And as they’ve also had to cancel their winter recital, (they hope to have a May recital), Caruso said while they haven’t officially discussed it, they might live stream that performance.

“We’re open to anything,” she said. “Right now, on our Instagram and Facebook, we’re asking our students to send us videos of them performing the songs that they were going to perform in the winter recital last weekend. We’re posting those up on our stories and our feeds to give people something to brighten up their social media, which they think is very doom and gloom right now.”

Caruso said the private music instruction class schedule will be fashioned as close as possible to what students are accustomed to.

“We’re encouraging our teachers to keep their normal lesson times,” she said. “But we also understand that with the changes in school, that might not be possible. Ultimately, we’re giving everyone the flexibility to change their times if they want. But most of our teachers do teach multiple lessons a day, so they’ll have a few to work out each day.”

The goal with having the students go “live” with their instructor will allow each teacher the ability to critique – and reward – their students’ lessons.

“The video conferencing is live, though there is a slight delay,” Caruso said. “But for all purposes, it’s live and as the student plays, the teacher can stop and start them and help them with their fingerings, or the way they’re holding their mouth or the way they’re standing. It will be as close as it would be in real life as possible.”

Teachers will utilize Zoom, a free and easy software for the virtual lessons.

For more information, visit Facebook, nashuacms.org or Instagram at nashuacms.

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