Cambridge Quaranchats

In this kick-off episode, I chat with Eleanor Ryan about the importance of music in times of crisis. Eleanor is a professional violinist, who worked in the Caribbean island of Trinidad for nearly 10 years. She is now doing a Master's at Cambridge University in Arts, Creativity and Education and plans on continuing for a PhD after the summer. Her research explores the 'whiteness' of classical music and the performativity of race in musical pedagogy. Her work is auto-ethnographic and critically investigates the role of white music teachers in the Caribbean context. In this episode, we discuss the ways in which musicians around the world have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the resilience of many artists and musicians when it comes to finding new channels of creativity. We also discuss the flourishing of new friendships in Cambridge during this time of collective quarantine and our initial experiences of the pandemic in the UK, right after the country moved into lockdown.