— Organists and Organ Playing —

Rehearsal by FaceTime

October 3, 2020

Last night was only our second rehearsal for the season opening concerts of Early Music Hawai’i “(Masters of the English Reformation“), now tentatively scheduled for later in this month. If you can believe this, our last rehearsal was way back in August, on the 11th! And yesterday’s date was October 2nd, a separation of over 6 weeks!

What happened? Why, a spike in the number of cases of coronavirus, of course. Governor Ige issued a shutdown order which cancelled our planned rehearsals. You can see the trajectory of virus cases in Hawaii as illustrated by the following graph:

Trajectory of coronavirus cases in Hawaii

Meanwhile, director Scott Fikse took a well-deserved vacation to the Northwest, knowing that he would have to self-quarantine for 14 days following his return to Hawai’i. (The rules are set to change October 15 when travelers can submit a COVID test result within 72 hours of arrival in Hawaii. A negative test result would allow travelers to forego the mandatory 14-day quarantine.)

We scheduled last night’s rehearsal knowing that Scott couldn’t join us in person. So we used FaceTime for him to hear our rehearsal and make comments!

Naomi Barrett and Taylor Ishida practice their duet, “Sweet Nimphe” by Thomas Morley. (See the iPhone propped up on the red hymnal in the foreground?)
Tomas Ramos and Ben Sobel practice their duet, “I Go Before My Darling,” by Thomas Morley. My iPhone is clearly in the foreground.
“A Silly Sylvan” by Orlando Gibbons. L-R: Naomi Barrett, Taylor Ishida, Keane Ishii, Tomas Ramos and Sarah Lambert Connelly.
Keane Ishii listens to Scott’s critique (iPhone is mounted on a tripod)

(For those who don’t know, FaceTime is a video chat application. It’s how I “see” my grandson every weekend. It’s also how I teach my organ students remotely, and for those who don’t have iPhones, I use WhatsApp for Android users.)

Our fearless leader gives us instructions via iPhone! He’s at home quarantining from his trip to the Northwest.

Hey, the whole setup worked just fine—in fact, it was just about ideal! The only interruption came when we changed out iPhones due to battery issues—we used a total of three different iPhones for the rehearsal.

I’ll let you know when we schedule the broadcast of our concert.

3 thoughts on “Rehearsal by FaceTime”

  1. Lovely to see this. I’ve done that first duet as soprano and treble viola da gamba:
    https://youtu.be/6TqisObDORc

    Did you know there are a few good viol players in Honolulu? Chad Uyehara, JuHua Wei, and perhaps Jane Freeman Moulin.There are some on Maui as well, though I no longer know what their playing levels are. Also, if you ever need to do a video with people recording separately at home, I’d be happy to join in. I haven’t been able to get back to Hawaii in a few years (first when trying to get UK residency and now because of the virus), but it’s still home in my heart. I guess I have two homes now.

    Have a wonderful concert, whenever it ends up being!

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