Music in the Time of Covid in Trichotomy

“Live” concert

Our music organisation partnered with a startup company/club that “networks” people who love music and music organisations. I don’t know what that means - I have read their description many times but still haven’t figured out their business model. I get the sense that the founder has connections with lots of rich people, gets them to join the club, and then plans to have non-profits pay dues for membership in the club so the non-profits would get to meet these members at organised events?

Still figuring it out. It has a tinge of snuggling up to wealthy people.

In any case, since there is a pandemic, there’s been no in-person events, but our new organiser (did I mention that ENT Pianist stepped up to take on the organiser role?) contacted him and we formed a partnership. I’m not sure what is going to come out of it, but our group was “featured” at a virtual event hosted by them.

The event was very well-organised and well-run; it featured a handful of members in our organisation, who performed at our homes, followed by a Q-and-A panel session hosted by their CEO. One of the new composers who joined us last year (we had two new composers joining) performed his composition, alongside the Ex-Chamber Music Group Organiser’s violinist friend, the new Organiser, and myself. For the discussion it was Ex-Chamber Music Group Organiser joined us, with the New Organiser and myself (we are all board members or ex-board members).

Playing at home wasn’t that great. I don’t have my own laptop anymore - my 2015 Surface’s (which was a hand-me-down from La Professeure) wireless card crapped out, and my personal computer is still La Professeure’s (other) hand-me-down Dell that she got in 2006. So I have been using my work-issued laptop, a Lenovo Carbon X1. It is a great machine, except it runs New Hip Company’s version of Linux and I don’t have the ability to install Zoom on it (it’s a security risk), so I had to use the web version of Zoom, which doesn’t let you turn off volume adjustment. Listening back on the recording, I could tell I was constantly getting volume adjusted. Not very nice for the Tchaikovsky Barcarolle from the Seasons, but definitely not nice for the Prokofiev Montague et Capulet transcription.

The discussion was nice though; the organiser teed up a solid 15 mins of promo for us. Unfortunately, I could see from the Zoom guest list that pretty much everybody who joined the event were already members. So we were not making new outreach.

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Split

Because the New York case load is getting better, the New Organiser is considering ways to restart in-person concerts. We had a board meeting to discuss this, and got no consensus on whether to or how to restart, so we sent out a survey to the membership to ask whether they’d be comfortable going to or performing in an in-person concert.

The result was basically, 1/3 yes, 1/3 no, 1/3 maybe.

We also asked open-ended questions about what factor would affect their decisions. And even that is split: Some would definitely participate if the event is outside Manhattan, some would definitely not participate if the event is in Manhattan. Some would definitely not participate indoors, and some would definitely not participate outdoors because they won’t play on a digital piano.

That shows just how little consensus we have.

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Repertoire

As a pianist, getting locked down doesn’t affect my playing very much since I play so much solo repertoire. I have string and flute player friends who are coming up with creative ways to continue playing chamber music, but for me, nothing changed.

The only change is that my rep isn’t determined by concert schedule anymore. So I’ve been digging up old rep that have fallen to the wayside. There’s this piece, Trois Novelettes by Poulenc, that I’d tried to learn before we moved out, and I’m still trying to learn it all through the lockdown. Something about being neo-classical but sounding romantic that throws me off. By November I’ll be celebrating 10 years of being officially fat, dumb, and lazy, so I am picking up some patriotic music to learn too.

I just hope by then it’ll actually be an occasion to celebrate by then.

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