Sarah Bob, in a live performance. “I’ve learned to respect the pause button.” Ling-Wen Tsai photography
For any working musician, not being busy feels like failure.
There’s always something to do. A new piece to learn. Rehearsals to get to. Promoting a gig. Getting to a gig. Making arrangements for the next gig.
But every musician woke up last spring to find it all stopped. No gigs, no travel, no PR, no new music to learn.
Not everyone responded the same way. Pianist Sarah Bob used to be as busy as anybody. As founder and director of the New Gallery Concert Series—known by all as “New Gal,” a stalwart of Boston’s contemporary music scene for more than two decades—she understands the interactions with colleagues, the rehearsals, and the endless hours of practice that make up a musical life.
“We are constantly churning out things, learning music, getting the PR done, making contact,” she says. “When everything stopped, I saw colleagues putting things out immediately. I needed to feel the grief.
“I’ve learned to respect the pause button,” she says. “When we lose someone, we take time off. We are all experiencing loss. I needed to understand that pausing was not a sign of failure.”
Sober words, and a healthy perspective. Forced to cancel New Gal’s spring concerts, she took time off. The Jamaica Plain resident invested energy in her family—her husband, composer and percussionist Aaron Trant, and their two children.
“It can’t go to waste,” she says of the enforced layoff. “I need to learn something from this, as a parent, as a person, as a presenter—including things for myself. Pushing stuff out was not taking care of myself.”
She began learning Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.” “I’d figured I would do it when I was retired,” she says. “It became a pandemic project. I have zero plans to perform this. I learn a variation a week, record it, and send it to my mom and my aunts and a close friend. It’s about caring for myself.”
Finally, in September, it was time to reconnect with the New Gal audience. New Gal programs have always been uncategorizable—usually driven by collaborations with visual artists. Bob sensed that even that approach needed an adjustment for the new reality.
“I knew my job was not just to create a live experience, and then broadcast it,” she says. “It was to connect in a different way.”
The program—aptly entitled “Fragility and Resilience”—will be re-broadcast November 15, part of the Boston New Music Festival (bostonnewmusicfestival.org). It features compositions by Stephanie Ann Boyd, Bahar Royaee, Evan Tucker, Trant, Allison Loggins-Hull and Anthony Green. Charles Coe reads his poetry. Bob, flutist Sarah Brady and others perform.
Multimedia artist Sheila Gallagher designed the event, and contributed live visual improvisations. A kind-of TikTok breakdown spices up the music-making. All of the artists speak to the audience, dissecting their own work or the circumstances that led to the compositions.
“I got so much positive feedback,” Bob says. “It was such a good thing for New Gal. We had people from all over the world watching, and that’s wonderful. That might be something that will change permanently. The connection is important.”
For now making that connection—without the physical magic of the concert hall—will be experimental. Risks will be taken, and some programs won’t be perfect.
“The world wants us to try,” she says. “People are forgiving. The New Gal patrons and others, they’re there for us. It’s okay to make a mistake. To experience failure and move on. Having a community that is so open is intoxicating.
“We have to figure it out. I want to create a mood of hope,” she says. “It’s incredible anxiety—I can’t believe what’s happened in this world. We have to figure out how to be our authentic selves. I can’t think of an alternative.”
Keith Powers covers music and the arts for Leonore Overture, Gannett New England and Opera News. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com.