-hopes schools can produce good musicians

AS the Music Coordinator of Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) and Head of the Department, Altea Wintz takes on a lot of responsibilities by moulding the students under her charge to realise their true potential in music.

She related that her responsibility ranges from writing courses and supervising those courses and lecturing. She is also tasked with promoting music from the CPCE level across the country at the local centres where music is taught. This features general education and early childhood trainee teachers, who are required to participate in a music course as part of their training.

Wintz said that CPCE under her leadership developed the Associate Degree programme with emphasis on music three years ago. Since then, she has been overseeing the entire programme along with the training of teachers who are studying early childhood and primary education.

The music lecturer told the Guyana Chronicle that she studied music at the University of Southern Caribbean in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) and returned to Guyana in 2019 with the sole purpose of changing the way we interact with music in schools.

She reported that she applied to CPCE for the position of music lecturer for the entire programme in 2022 and after it was developed and implemented as a course, she was appointed in 2023.

Wintz was successful in developing the course at CPCE with assistance from two persons, Paul Cort, a music lecturer, who was based in T&T and is pursuing his Doctor of Philosophy Degree (PHD) in music and Boyd Gibson.

It is her belief that if we had more music teachers in Guyana, the calibre of musicians coming out of schools would be higher.

She stated that at CPCE, they offer a two-year associate degree with emphasis on music, teaching students to read music with the primary instrument and secondary instrument of choice being mandatory.

Wintz describes the course as rigorous and said that there are in-person sessions up to four times per week with classes as early as 07:30hrs.

The music educator explained that the classes centre on the study of air training and sight singing, music technique, composition and even music history in general, while other courses include technique classes in learning to play the steel pan and quartet (major in music), which requires a lot of patience and practice to develop skills over time.

Further, she disclosed that they recently embarked on a preliminary programme where persons with no qualifications in music could do a six-month course. Once they pass the final exam, they will be accepted into CPCE for the two-year associate degree with emphasis in Music course.

She pointed out that music classes in schools haven’t been offered for a long time but now they are trying to build capacity. In so doing, a lot of the teachers that work with her are putting in the extra work with their students.

Wintz revealed that the current class at CPCE has 14 students enrolled for the music course and they will be graduating next year.

Additionally, all students must write and pass the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music (ABRSM) exam before they can graduate.

The 30-year-old said she is a Guyanese, who went abroad to study music because ever since she could speak, her mother encouraged her to play the piano and even had a private tutor for her sessions.

However, she didn’t like the piano and opted to play the violin. She would later meet Dr. Prashanti Mendez, who first offered her classes at the National School of Music before giving her private classes.

Dr. Mendez was instrumental in honing her skills on the violin, and at church and other events she played the instrument. At age 17, she led a choir at a church event, all while studying music at the National School of Music.

Wintz said music is her passion and she was self-motivated to seek opportunities to study. It was due to this desire that she applied in 2016 to the University of the Southern Caribbean and was accepted. Due to a lack of finance, she was only able to begin classes in 2017 following a lot of fundraising efforts and support from family and friends.

She told this publication that her stay at USC was tough. While there, she worked as a clerk in the music department, played the violin with the orchestra and sang with the USC choir, which was a great opportunity. She was also privileged to tour T&T and even visited Barbados.

She disclosed that during her years studying overseas, she would return home every August to sell books with her friend, Desnetha Croker, to raise funds. She emphasised that it wasn’t easy as a foreigner studying abroad, since money was “tight.”

Wintz is married and lives at Ideal Road, Soesdyke-Linden Highway. She would commute daily to CPCE for her classes and to meet her other obligations at the institution.