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The ��ɫӰ�� Community Music School has opened for the fall 2020 semester for in-person lessons, as well as continuing to offer a quality online lesson experience. Registration for lessons is still open and ongoing throughout the semester, and may be done utilizing the registration form that's found on most pages of the ��ɫӰ��CMS website.

While the Crimson Youth Choir, Indiana Community Choir, and the Indiana Concert Band are not meeting this fall, along with the guitar, piano, and early childhood classes, the private lessons are continuing to fill up.

“Although overall private lesson enrollment is down from the fall of 2019,” said ��ɫӰ��CMS director Jeff Wacker, “about 80 percent of our current lesson requests and arrangements are for face-to-face lessons. It certainly highlights the importance that parents and students attach to learning and creating music in-person.”

Anyone interested in taking private lessons in person is encouraged to review the Private Lessons page of the ��ɫӰ��CMS website in order to read and understand all of the protocols and guidelines that parents and students are required to follow.

We've implemented all of ��ɫӰ�� and Music Department guidelines for in-person instruction,” said Wacker, “to include the wearing of masks, use of hand sanitizer, holding lessons in larger rooms, allowing rooms to air out following a lesson, physical distancing, etc.”

All instructors, from the undergraduate teaching apprentices to the ��ɫӰ�� music faculty members, have been given the options of teaching face-to-face, online, or both, with most electing to teach both ways. “In most cases, whichever way the parent and student are most comfortable can be accommodated,” said Wacker.

“Our goal is to not see musical learning and skills stop due to the pandemic, but to find ways for students to continue to progress and enjoy making music. We've certainly we've discovered over the past several months how vitally important the Arts are in our daily lives and society.”

For more information, visit the ��ɫӰ�� Community Music School website, email community-music@iup.edu, or call 724-357-4565.

The ��ɫӰ�� Community Music School is supported, in part, by the Lively Arts at ��ɫӰ�� and the Pennsylvania Rural Arts Alliance, a Pennsylvania Partner in the Arts that receives funding from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency that is funded through an appropriation by the legislature.