Music Monday - Welcome back to another year of music making.

Here in Western Australia the music teaching community, refreshed after the 6-week hot summer break, turns its attention to the arrival of the omicron variant of Covid19. 

For those of you reading from afar, WA has maintained until now a firmly closed border (a matter of vigorous political debate) and so we are only now experiencing the start of our own omicron wave. 

After a relatively normal 2021 teaching year, teachers here are now joining the ongoing international and interstate discussions about the most suitable masks to wear while singing. Or whether performing groups in schools should be limited to single year cohorts to minimise potential viral spread within a school. Or whether choreography for the school musical can include body contact with another performer. 

One of my singing students happily picked up a gig in a Perth Fringe Festival show this week after the original singer was sadly deemed a close contact of a positive case and forced into isolation. There are winners and losers at this time.

There is much uncertainty about how this semester will proceed in schools. Some disruption seems inevitable. I found yesterday’s all-day teaching in a mask very tiring. So did my students and teaching colleagues. 

Our daughter in the USA has been doing this for two years. It feels odd to her to be not wearing a mask now. 

News from interstate suggests that omicron might be receding. That is good news. But will another wave follow? 

Right now, the questions outnumber the answers. 

To end on a completely different note, so many of us were saddened to learn of American actress  Betty White’s passing on 31st December 2021. Did you know that in her early career she also sang? Take a listen to this:

Enjoy your day!