Lindsey Aumann said she missed performing in front of a crowd.
She missed the beat of her drum and her ensemble’s french horns. She missed hearing the crowd applaud after each performance and being a part of something bigger than herself.
COVID-19 called it all to a halt.
When the 21-year-old UF music education senior heard that she could collaborate with friends and perform for hundreds of people without leaving her home, she didn’t skip a beat before signing up to sing in the Virtual Orchestra.
Aumann is one of many UF music students whose performances were canceled after UF’s shift to online school and remote learning in March. She was among 20 UF students and seven other musicians, including a UF alumnus and an out-of-state musician, who collaborated in a virtual orchestra performance that was uploaded to YouTube May 10.
“This gave us all an opportunity to work with each other again and make music,” Aumann said.
When the Hippodrome canceled its weekly jazz series, Jordan Castillow, a UF music performance master’s student who was supposed to perform at the theatre, said he wanted to find a way to bring his arrangement of pop singer Niall Horan’s song, “Flicker,” to life.
So the 26-year-old posted his idea for a virtual orchestra on his Instagram account and called on his fellow musicians to participate. He included instructions and a link to a Google Drive for submissions.
“Let’s all record music together,” Castillow wrote in the post.
After stay-at-home orders isolated her from her classmates, 20-year-old UF music performance junior Caitlin Petros said she joined the Virtual Orchestra because it gave her the opportunity to play music with her friends again.
“When I was first doing it, I didn’t really know how it was going to turn out because I hadn’t done anything like that before,” the trumpet player said. “But after watching the video and how it all came together, I thought it was really cool.”
UF music performance doctoral student Pamela Mireles played the violin during the performance. The 26-year-old violin-player said she learned the violin sheet music in 10 minutes, but struggled with recording at first without a full ensemble, she said.
Mireles said she had fun collaborating with the group. She said she felt moved by the song’s message about perseverance, especially in light of the struggles from COVID-19, so she decided to participate.
“I had to do this, especially because the song is really beautiful,” Mireles said. “I think it’s related to what’s happening in our environment right now.”
The musicians submitted videos of themselves singing and playing instruments to Castillow’s Google Drive. Castillow, 25-year-old UF alumnus Ryan Colon and 20-year-old UF advertising sophomore Logan Martin edited the files throughout April to create the final video.
As of right now, the Virtual Orchestra doesn’t have any future projects planned, Castillow said. However, he was impressed with everyone’s recordings and would like to do it again.
“I would add one person’s take to the recording and it would sound amazing,” he said,” and I would add another person and it would sound even more amazing.”
Contact Diane at dhernandez@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter @dianehern19.
After stay-at-home orders isolated her from her classmates, 20-year-old UF music performance junior Caitlin Petros said she joined the Virtual Orchestra because it gave her the opportunity to play music with her friends again.
