This second semester was set to be an incredibly busy one, both exciting and stressful. At the New England Conservatory of Music, kids were just getting ready to play their recitals and juries which they had been working tirelessly for the whole year. Of those kids, I too was in the same predicament. Anxiety, stress, and excitement were ruling in our two-building musical campus on St. Botolph Street in Boston. My piano professor, Alexander Korsantia, had just sent me a text asking me to come to a lesson on a Monday instead of a Wednesday (as he usually does), but superseding this text was a notably long email that the school had just sent out. In it were the words “online learning.” Now, for anyone to understand how hilarious that sounds to a music student, you must experience any sort of music class, such as theory or solfège [a method of teaching musicians aural skills to “hear” pitch while sight reading]. Learning theory or solfège online is the near equivalent of learning a language without any words.
I had known that COVID-19 was a serious threat to safety and things were quickly changing. What I had not known was that it would effectively shut down every university in Boston on the same day. My experience about finding out I had to go home for the rest of the semester is as short and quick to the point as I just wrote. There was no preparation for this, only an abrupt feeling of “oh well, that’s it I guess.” Of course, some people were sobbing at the fact that they had to leave their friends at school, and then the others were only just upset that their GRADUATION was cancelled. The whirlwind at school ended with my father driving up to Boston from D.C. and bringing me back home.
At home, I do miss Boston and my life there, but I am just as focused as I would be in lessons with my teacher. Music is such a subject that if I cannot devote time and effort every day, there is no use. I practice my instrument, the piano, every day. I try to write music every day. I am occasionally given a brush by my mother (who is a painter) in order to try to paint. I wake up late. I sleep late. I drink and eat. This is my life at home. It sounds better than I could have imagined now, come to think of it.
Of the pieces of music I practice daily, I added a new piece, Frederic Chopin’s Sonata No. 2. The magnificent sonata consists of what might be the darkest and most tragic movement, what many call the “Funeral March.” Besides its obvious musical greatness, I started learning it because it is a painful piece of music that reminds us of how fragile we truly are.
My friends complain to me every day. “I want to go back to school and start partying again,” says just about everyone I know. It is quite interesting to compare and see how most young adults my age struggle to do anything productive at home with their parents. But, then again, my Georgian heritage has blessed me with the loving culture of my family, and our “supra” hospitality does not just work or apply for strangers, but most importantly, family. No one knows what the future will look like, but funny enough, being a musician, you get used to the quick changes and contrasts in life because that is how we are taught to play our music.
Listen to Sandro Tsereteli here: