Music Monday - Mentoring in music

A few weeks ago, I wrote about our 4-year-old grandson’s reactions to seeing a production of ‘Mary Poppins’ at John Curtin College of the Arts. What I didn’t talk about in that post was the orchestra.

John Curtin College of the Arts (JCCA) has a long history of putting on large scale musicals. Over the years the makeup of the orchestra has included all-student orchestras, small completely professional bands, and a mix of both. There is a strong argument for each of these, but from an educational point of view, maximum student participation is obviously preferred. A former head of music at the school achieved wonderful success with large, entirely student player orchestras; though it must be said that the audience got better sound towards the end of the run than on opening night - as the players gradually found more of the notes. Still, no one in the audience was ever in doubt that they were at a genuine school production.

Which brings me to the ‘Mary Poppins’ orchestra. This was made up of around 2/3 student players and the remaining 1/3 teachers. The driving force behind the decision was the fact that the ‘Poppins’ score is particularly difficult to play. But the benefits went far beyond that. I observed that the students’ playing went from strength to strength as they sat in among the professional teacher players. The sound from the pit was excellent right through the season. And everyone in the pit seemed to be having fun as well as learning.

Mentoring is such an important aspect of teaching and learning in music. Attempts are often made to formalise the process, and this has merit, however some of the best mentoring comes from informal interactions.

Much of what I have learned as a teacher of music and singing voice has been through formal study. Just as important, however, has been the interactions with more experienced mentors through the years – those wonderful practitioners you meet informally at conferences, as colleagues and in some unexpected settings – for me one such meeting occurred on an airline flight after a conference.

During the pandemic, our access to informal mentoring has been limited. In Australia we are not flying internationally to conferences yet - and the zoom chat box comes as a poor second best to live interactions. But we still have our work colleagues and social media.

As music teachers, we all have a part to play in the mentoring process – young teachers can benefit from chats with more experienced teachers, and older, more experienced teachers can give back by taking younger and less experienced teachers under their wing. It can be a wonderful, fun and valuable cycle.