Kitsap Philharmonic playing a happy tune after COVID hiatus

It wasn't the day the music died, it just got put on the shelf for quite a while.

Central Kitsap School District instrumental music director Michael Woods remembers it well.

"The day we went into quarantine, we had just finished our dress rehearsal for a concert the night before," Woods said. "The performance we were about to do was going to be pretty special."

Then came the morning announcements over the loudspeaker at Central Kitsap High School on March 11, 2020: "All after-school activities are cancelled."

Yes, the start of COVID-19 pandemic was a sucker punch for students and teachers of all types, including those involved in musical pursuits. For Woods, there was a double dose of disappointment as the artistic director of the Kitsap Philharmonic. The youth symphony was in the initial stages of rehearsing for its spring concert when COVID-19 brought about a swift shutdown that would last roughly 18 months.

Kitsap Philharmonic appears to be fully recovered from the pandemic blues as the group is preparing for its upcoming Feb. 11 concert at Central Kitsap's performing arts center. K-Phil's intermediate ensemble, led by South Kitsap School District orchestra director Keira Merwine, will be playing music from Bach and Bizet, while the Woods-led advanced ensemble will perform selections from the Japanese animated fantasy film "Howl's Moving Castle."

"We're at 110 kids, which is more than we've ever had," said Kitsap Philharmonic board director Brian Humm.

The free concert is Kitsap Philharmonic's fifth since COVID restrictions limiting in-person musical performances faded away in the fall of 2021. That's music to Woods' ears.

"It does feel like we are back in a normal routine," he said.

When Kitsap Philharmonic launched in the fall of 2018 as a musical collective for students ages 10-21, the mission was the same as it is today: promote musical education while producing three concerts a year (fall, winter and spring) with separate auditions each season. The group's first audition produced 62 members representing 18 different schools.

"I think that's what makes this special. Our bands in our area are so used to competing against each other and everything. This is one of those unique opportunities where kids from all over our different communities come together and they collaborate with each other," Woods said. "It's pretty neat to see an oboe player from Kington working with an oboe player from Bremerton and a bassoon player from Central Kitsap, and they are all on the same team with they walk in our room."

That's what made the COVID-19 shutdown of schools so difficult. Imagine a music/band teacher trying to do his or her job at the beginning of the pandemic when students were forced to take classes online. Woods said students did a lot of "listening" to music at the time because "playing" music while trying to operate Zoom proved quite challenging.

"I was trying to use some software where they would perform things at home and then turn it in. Frankly, kids couldn't do it," Woods said. "A bunch of the students I worked with, they didn't have high-speed internet, they didn't have the technology to do much at all."

Woods admitted there was a significant "grieving" period during those early COVID days for music educators and students alike.

"It was really tough," Woods said. "What we do in the music classroom, there so much that's about playing and interacting and working with your peers."

Even when students returns to classrooms, COVID-19 protocols — masks, cohorting, chair spacing — continued to make music production difficult. Teachers were working with smaller groups separately.

"You are working on putting things together, but on one day, maybe you'd have all the flutes there, but on the next day, none of them were there," Woods said. "To use a sports metaphor, it'd be like if you are working on your offensive plays, but at the practice today there are no wide receivers or a quarterback. Let's figure out how that works."

Woods is thankful those days of isolation are in the past and music can come alive once again.

"So much about what you do," he said, "it is doing it with people."

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Kitsap Philharmonic returns to perform after long COVID break