Star rage as university shuts practice rooms for holidays
mainThe Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt is not happy:
Oh, come on, University of Ottawa, my alma mater. Closing the music building for several weeks during the holidays so nobody can practise there? Shame on you! I used to practise every day there in the practise cubicles–including holidays. OK, if you need to close on Christmas Day and Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, OK. But for two weeks? You can’t expect serious musicians to go without practising for that long. Many pianists simply don’t have access to a piano otherwise. I hope this decision will be reversed for them at least.
Angela would like you to sign this petition.
Ottawa without a piano studio is like a pancake without maple syrup.
No STEM classes in the music building. Pretty soon, no music building, no School of Music.
It’s not anyone associated with STEM that will shut down music schools. It will be the current madness stemming from the leftist politically correct rage mobs who will deem classical music sexist, racist, Islamophobic, Christocentric, capitalist and every other “sin” of its out of control identity politics dogma just like they did in Mao’s cultural revolution seeking to smash the “Four Olds.” Say bye, bye, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. But remember, “the heart has no borders” [and no brain either].
Repeat after me: “ORANGE MAN BAD!”
Well done, Ms. Hewitt. Admirable musician, admirable person.
It’s time for the students to stage a mass practice session in front of the chancellor’s residence morning, noon, and night until they relent and open the practice rooms. How much viola playing can the chancellor take?
Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin is also closing for 2 weeks. Many pianists have no possibility to practice.
Dear worried pianist, I sympathise with all those from that school. I recommend taking the same route as the uOttawa students are doing. Keep pushing and don’t give up!
While very sympathetic to the students left without practice facilities, it seems a big ask to heat, light, maintain and staff a whole building for two weeks over a holiday that many take with families because of the requirements of relatively few students.
Didn’t Juilliard have some scheme a few years back to charge students something if they wanted to stay in residence over the holidays? And that was mostly applicable to foreign students and was about a roof over their heads in the heart of winter.
While delighted so see that the great Angela Hewitt still takes — as she always has — interest in her roots, this seems very much a first-world problem, as is the indisputable fact that institutions of higher learning are struggling financially.
With all due respect, studying music at a university is a very “first-world” activity. Any problems that go with it are likely to be “first-world” problems.
Is it my imagination, or does Doug seem even more easily triggered since the midterm elections?
Can cuckoo clocks be said to have triggers?
The University of Northern Iowa also shut down its music practice building at Russell Hall as well. I was there to visit and could not get in I noticed some oriental students were trying to get in, so this must have been their introduction to learning about American music teaching “methodology”. This type of teaching “methodology” explains how to become a successful musician — don’t practice your instrument between semesters.