Sometime about a year and a half ago, my daughter's very excellent (yes, "very" -- the word I tell my students to avoid) singing teacher was given her marching orders from this country. Doina was working here, had been so for a number of years and had built up a steady clientele, but was told that as she was between 55 and 60 and didn't have enough money behind her, she couldn't stay.
Never mind that her business was flourishing and because she could teach from home, this was something she could long do to support herself. Never mind that she seemed to be the only classical teacher in the western suburbs. Never mind that she has a PhD is music and extensive experience in operas including running them. The good people at the Immigration Department said that such experience wasn't necessary to teach the general public.
Great.
Music is my daughter's life. And while she loves pop, truth is her voice is more suited to classical singing. She sings in the Victorian State Singers, who are as serious a group as you're ever likely to find, and the Australian Girls Choir. She's learning piano and music theory and studying music at school. But her strength is singing. She struggles with piano and is behind where she'd need to be to use piano as her VCE instrument. She's also behind in theory. And in the time since Doina left, we can chart a decline in her voice.
In the meantime, she's had another teacher, who was quite good -- and a great singer -- but who thought that the exercises PH was doing with Doina were far too hard -- so hard, in fact, that she couldn't do them.
The best solution seemed to be to go back to PH's original teacher, whom we left mainly because of the travelling needed to get there and back. Imagine our surprise and delight to find she'd not only moved closer but to our own suburb! Perfect. Only she's not teaching privately anymore. She doesn't know anyone she can recommend in the western suburbs. No, let me rephrase that: she doesn't know anyone who is teaching in the western suburbs.
So, I'm left contemplating travelling further afield, or trying to engage Doina through Skype. I know she's taught violin successfully this way, but I can't imagine how it would work with singing because of the delays. Even a fraction of a second -- Doina's playing scales and arpeggios, and PH is singing them back, only Doina's hearing different notes to the ones she's now playing. How would that be? Perhaps the only way is to give it a try. But I'm angry, immeasurably angry, that we're in this position in the first place.
Such skills are not needed to teach the general public? Such skills were making a difference to my daughter's life. But, of course, she's just the general public so we shouldn't give a shit about her. You know, if Doina had wanted to go, I would have been sad, and said fair enough. But she didn't want to go. She waged a campaign to stay, and many of us wrote supporting letters. I thought mine was strongly argued, but I didn't even get an acknowledgment. I know she'd love to come back -- whether that was viable financially if she were given a new visa is another matter, but it's a moot point anyway. I'm sure PH wasn't the only disappointed student -- we're just one family who's been affected, but a year and a half on those effects are still reverberating within us, just as they are, no doubt, with Doina.
0 comments:
Post a Comment