How and why I organised my first online summer concert

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As my students' annual summer concert was cancelled due to Covid-19 health precautions, I decided to collect videos from the students (with permission from parents) for an internal “Summer Concert Online”. It was a lot of work but it was well worth it as the comments below suggested! We also raised money for the Trussell Trust. I would like to explain some of the thinking behind the organisation of the concert.

Two of my main motivations for planning the concert were:

  1. Creating an opportunity for students to celebrate their hard work and to see each other's work. The buzz of performance, sharing work and feeling part of a music-making community is motivating to musicians at all stages.

  2. I wanted students to be aware that their music skills can be used to fundraise for meaningful causes. We raised £90 for the Trussell Trust. 

The “concert” consisted of:

  1. A YouTube Playlist of 21 videos

  2. Concert Programme (Printable PDF)

Altogether, I edited 21 videos. For child safety, neither first names nor full names were not used, and no faces shown for students aged under 18. Instead, I asked students for original artwork, original photos and experimented with cuts and transitions to make the videos more dynamic.

I felt strongly about including a duet video because it is important for students to see their teachers playing music. As the focus on exams can contribute to the heavy focus on piano solo music, I think that it is important to highlight piano duets, and ensemble work as a possible music path.

Another of the videos was a draft version of my video, “Take Me Back to The Ocean”. I felt that it would be significant to include this. There aren't too many East-Asians in British pop. People like Korean pop but second-generation East-Asians like me were not encouraged to go into pop music. Maybe K-pop will change that.

In terms of using artwork and photos, as a multi-disciplinary artist myself, I make videos, zines and art that connects or responds to music. I wanted to show the students that their music would make a great video. 

As well as putting together a YouTube Playlist of the videos, I made a programme which students/ parents could print off. I envisaged that this could be included along with their other records of achievement and archived with other concert programmes. 

I also made a Summer Concert quiz with some questions about the pieces. My personal favourite was “How many lambs does Mary have?” In making the quiz, I tried to include questions that would involve googling (“How many piano sonatas did Beethoven write?”) and ones that did and didn't have definite answers. I did make a hilarious mistake in the quiz – but I think I got away with it.

I was grateful to receive a lot of positive feedback about the video concert. Unlike students and audiences who are adults, I find that children don't often give spontaneous feedback. I felt that students and parents appreciated it, as shown by the comments below.

A few of the videos were already public as I had obtained permission from parents. I have been gradually collecting permission from parents/students to make other videos public. This takes time and administration. So the videos that are public are not necessarily selected as being better (although they are brilliant of course!) it's just the way it's worked out so far.

Here’s what people said

I have anonymised the comments for privacy. 

“It was nice to listen to music and have the pleasure of enjoying other people's hard work and dedication. We think it was a wonderful idea and are glad to be in it. Thank you!”

“We really enjoy the music with the special effects on the background. I think the whole idea was organised well. Even though in this situation we still can enjoy the music. Is a very successful virtual summer concert. We fully appreciate the hard work... Thank you very much.”

“We thoroughly enjoyed the concert thank you and the editing was fantastic! We particularly loved the Miaou [..] and also loved Take me back to the ocean!”

“What a fantastic virtual concert you put together. Very creative! We sat down with some popcorn and really enjoyed it [smile emoji] you clearly put so much effort into it and it was fantastic.. ___ commented that it must be very rewarding for you both [..] to watch it and know that you taught all those fingers to play and produce such amazing sounds. Thank you so much for all you do ☺️”

“Congratulations! The virtual concert was great! We really enjoyed the music and the visuals - especially Take Me Back to the Ocean. But everyone's contribution was interesting or beautiful or delightful or all three! [..] Thanks for putting the concert together. It was well worth it!

“Thank you to you both, particular to A, for organising the concert. We can see how much time and work A had put in, in editing each of the videos and putting the whole programme together. Thank you so much to both of you for making it a success. __ wanted to say that she really enjoyed the concert. She along with us listened to the concert from beginning to end. We all particularly enjoyed your duet. There was a real sense of cats in the music and also in the shape of the two pairs of hands jumping up and down on the piano – really good.”

“We enjoyed listening to the concert and everyone playing, who played in it. We liked the way A edited the videos. We appreciate his hard work... Thank You for everything.”                   

“Wow. Fantastic. Watched you going back to the ocean a few times. Amazing, so unusual. I like the music and the artwork. Thank you for sharing it.”

Challenges/Points to consider


In order to seek permission from students’ parents for participation, I prepared a flyer. Initially there was not too much response to this. It turned out that some parents thought that it would be live concert so my wording had perhaps been unclear. I then followed up with messages to ask for confirmation.

It took time to receive the videos and to transfer them.

It was tricky to convince students of the positives of seeing themselves playing music on screen. In the past, when I had mentioned adding their video to YouTube, students would look horrified. I think they imagined themselves getting a million views and barbed comments.

While I can see why young people might have good reason to be wary of internet fame, I had felt the benefit of seeing my work on various platforms as I’ve made numerous music-based videos, from experimental art videos to training / teaching music videos recently (e.g. exam pieces). I plan to follow up with a survey in the future to ask how students felt about seeing their work on YouTube.

 
performance, creativity, songwriting, teachingThe Mollusc Dimensionmusic, piano, piano technique