Shalin Liu Performance Center, Rockport, Mass., home of Rockport Music. AlanJoslin photograph
Not everyone who loves music has played in an orchestra. But everyone who loves music has been in an audience.
For two decades, this column has been dedicated to musical performances—informing audiences about artists they might appreciate. Until this week, there has never been any lack of interesting performers to interview, music and ideas to examine, anecdotes to share.
It all vanished with shocking speed. Gone in a few days.
Musicians need an audience as much as they need a violin or a piano. Their discipline requires solitude—hours alone learning, and repeating. But they need the collective as well. Every musician imagines an audience. The deeply solitary experience balances the enthusiastic group experience. There is no replacing either.
With concert halls shuttered, live performances have come to a halt. Artists will have to find ways to survive, and right now, those join even more pressing concerns and uncertainties—like our collective health.
Music will survive. We live in ear-bud nation, after all—everyone has digital music to access, so long as there is electricity. Onstage, performers and presenters have been dabbling (most half-heartedly) with live-streaming for years, and those performances will become an increasingly important resource.
The debut of Boston Baroque’s first-ever chamber collective—X-tet, some of Boston’s most versatile and cerebral performers—will take place as planned but in an empty Fraser Performance Studio this Friday (classicalwcrb.org/#stream). Don’t miss it—Haydn and Mozart—the debut of a richly talented ensemble, joining Boston’s terrific early music scene.
Pianist Jeremy Denk live-streams his curation of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” from New York, this Friday evening (thegreenespace.org). The Berlin-based pianist Igor Levit (find him on Instagram or Twitter @igorpianist) has begun live studio performances with commentary, beginning last weekend with a thoughtful exploration of Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata.
The Metropolitan Opera (metopera.org) will stream from its Live In HD series every evening at 7:30 p.m., opening up its library of Lincoln Center performances. This week’s presentations include standard repertory classics like “Carmen,” “La Bohème,” and “Il Trovatore.” The Berlin Philharmonic has done the same, opening its trove of past performances for free (digitalconcerthall.com; free access with code BERLINPHIL).
Basic YouTube has a catalog of musical performances that dwarfs any aficionado’s library. Streaming stalwart Medici TV (medici.tv; a subscription service with a trial period), with longtime broadcast arrangements in major concert halls, has accumulated a rich collection of operas, symphonies and chamber performances.
There are many performers who excel at reaching virtual audiences—for an example of great and goofy stuff, look up violinist Ray Chen (@raychenviolin). Any musicians and presenters who have avoided or dismissed the live-stream audience will now reconsider.
Musicians epitomize the gig economy, and will suffer disproportionately because of it. No gig, no pay. Organizations like Early Music America (earlymusicamerica.org), the seminal publication of the period performance world, are collecting various resources for performers, like tutorials on basic live-streaming apps like Zoom.
But audiences must learn new things as well. Lack of pay has not stopped musicians from recording music, but it has stopped them from getting paid for it. Audiences are complicit in that, happily accessing for free or next-to-nothing.
Imagine if this enforced hiatus has the same disastrous effect on the performance industry—a fragile enough structure already.
This is not the time to exhort others to “support the arts”—whatever that means. This is a humanitarian crisis, and we must care for ourselves, and those closest to us. But when we can congregate again, when we can take two hours simply to listen to humans making music again—what then? We have much to learn.