The pandemic shutdown doesn’t have a lot of silver linings, but Sechelt-born violinist, performer, and teacher Serena Eades – while mostly stuck at home like the rest of us – has found a bright side or two.
Normally, as in pre-COVID times, the musician and composer would be touring with her bandmates in the popular fusion group Delhi 2 Dublin part of the year, or playing gigs and recitals with other musicians. On the side, she’d be teaching and running her violin school, the Serena Eades Academy of Music. These days, it’s pretty much all school-business, and that suits her fine.
“I’m enjoying being a business owner and enjoying deep-diving into entrepreneurship and community building in the music community, across generations, and styles and levels,” Eades told Coast Reporter. “And it’s been really cool to see how people are getting to know each other and work together in a different way.”
That “different way” refers, in part, to the capability to reach far and wide, thanks to the shift to online teaching. She and fellow academy teachers Mairi Rankin, Ludovica Burtone, and Tegan Ceschi-Smith, now have students from the Sunshine Coast to Alberta, Ontario, Michigan, and Colorado.
Eades said that while teaching as many as two people at a time in-person is still possible under COVID protocols, teaching online has revealed whole new dimensions of instruction.
“With Zoom, parents don’t have to get their kids to a lesson just as they’re trying to make dinner. And they don’t need to wait in the parking lot while their kid has a lesson,” said Eades. “From an actual lesson perspective, I can record the lesson we’re doing and then they can watch themselves on camera and me on camera and do this instant comparison and see angles differently than they’d be able to do in-person.”
Eades is so impressed with the advantages of virtual teaching she plans to integrate it when “normal” returns. “Even when we go back to in-person, all the group lessons will be a hybrid of in-person and online for those exact reasons,” she said.
This is not to say Eades isn’t also chafing at the restrictions imposed by the pandemic. Now based in Vancouver, she can come to the Coast to teach but protocols mean she still can’t visit family here, nor can she tour or play any live shows.
“We had a summer of shows booked last year, and that was all cancelled. A lot of them were rebooked to this year, and now they’ve all been cancelled, too,” said Eades. “It’s nice not to be juggling teaching and being on the road so much. I don’t miss the lack of sleep of touring, but I do miss the energy and the adrenaline of a good show.”
One additional project is keeping Eades busy, however, and that’s the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Performing Arts (SCFPA). Now in its 47th year, it was cancelled in 2020 and this year is going all-virtual.
Eades has been involved with the festival since she was a six-year-old violinist. These days she’s one of the organizers. “I am the bowed strings discipline coordinator, for violin, viola, cello, double bass. I’ve been working closely with the team on figuring out how to do it this year, how to do it virtually, every aspect of it. It’s challenging.”
The SCFPA runs from April 12 to 30, with a highlights concert on May 2. Details can be found at coastfestival.com.
