Sarah Darling: “If there ever was a moment for everyone to connect…”
Life for everyone has been disrupted. For musicians, the practice/rehearse/performance cycle has disappeared, leaving excessive alone time—even in a profession predicated on alone time.
“If there ever was a moment for everyone to connect,” Sarah Darling says, “it’s now.”
The versatile violinist/violist performs regularly with Boston Baroque, A Far Cry, Handel & Haydn Society and others. But now Darling, like everyone, has seen the ability to connect suspended. Every musician has. No performances. No rehearsals. Along with no income.
Musicians need ways to cope. Most are walking and exercising. Most continue practicing, but some are resting, doing long-postponed recovery from injuries. Many still meet students remotely—with mixed results.
“I’ve been teaching on FaceTime and Zoom all week,” Darling says. “Those tools have their strengths. A live-stream is wonderful in your kitchen. But there is no way to approximate live experiences.
“And this whole thing is also teaching me how crucial physicality is,” she says. “Normally when I rehearse, even the way I talk, I do all these familiar things. Now, my body is a mess. It has some learning to do.”
Worlds have never been so imbalanced.
“We are so disconnected, and at the same time over-connected,” suggests Anne Azéma, artistic director of the Boston Camerata. “We’re stagnant, in the same place.
Anne Azéma: “We are trying to look at these terrible, awful things in a poised manner.” Dan Bustler photograph
“Give us patience to breath through the day,” she says. “It’s important to breath. Our instinct is to run too far into the future.
“The Camerata is 65 years old, so we’ve seen a lot,” she says. “Human crises, economic, AIDS. Terrible things, and lots of colleagues died, or got left by the wayside. So we are trying to look at these terrible, awful things in a poised manner. That gives us some perspective.”
These days, the Amesbury resident maintains her mezzo instrument organically. “I never got up and sang scales in the morning,” she says. “That’s not me. My practice has always been specific—a program, a lesson, exploring different repertoire.
“But now my walks are the important thing for my voice. Everyday. It’s the backbone. It engages all my senses, more regularly than I usually have time to do.
“My singing is happening in different ways,” she says. “In meditation. Tonight I’ll sing a Zoom Seder. I’ll sing for Easter, something, I don’t know. All as a part of what I do.”
Andover native Lorna Tsai is home in Calgary, where she is principal second violin at the Calgary Symphony Orchestra. Tsai is also co-founder/artistic director of the Manchester Summer Chamber Music series. MSCM has already cancelled its summer season, and the CSO has also cancelled programs for the spring.
Lorna Tsai: “I’m trying to unplug. Just watching the news provokes anxiety.”
The Manchester festival has always kept an online archive, and Tsai’s CSO recently teamed up with the Edmonton Symphony in a skillfully edited Zoom performance of Elgar’s Nimrod variation. But Tsai herself has put her instrument down “until June or July, I hope,” and is taking a different approach to health. “I’m trying to unplug,” she says. “Letting an injury heal. Just watching the news provokes anxiety. I’m baking, exercising.”
Creating live-streams from home, or setting up students up with Zoom appointments—“that’s out of my comfort zone,” Tsai says. “I can’t imagine teaching over the internet.”
Composer Elena Ruehr, Brookline resident and longtime MIT professor, is still at work on an opera with a September premiere—“Cosmic Cowboy,” a White Snake production. The score is due in a few months, but Ruehr is also fulfilling immediate requests.
Elena Ruehr: “I miss it all.”
“I had a premiere with Arneis Quartet (Ruehr’s Seventh string quartet) that had to be cancel like everything else,” she says. “Now they can’t even rehearse. And with Zoom and the time delay, it’s not easy even to play together.
“So I wrote a short piece with a time delay for string quartet,” she says. “A lot of my friends are looking for solo pieces. I’m writing short things, lighthearted or silly, rather than expressing the sorrow. That sorrow or grief is personal.”
Part of that has to be the separation from colleagues, and the collaborative process. “I miss it all,” Ruehr says. “I love all aspects of it, probably the least of all the performances. No, the worst is copying parts. But the rehearsals are fun. And at first, talking to performers, sussing out what they can play and want to play. The writing is a kick too.
“I’m an optimist,” she says, “it’s the only way I can manage. I worry about the performers, and the audiences. I hope it’s hard for a couple months and then starts back up. People really love the social thing.”
Providence-based composer Eric Nathan also has a world premiere on his desk to finish—a commission for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, to open its season and its newly refurbished concert hall in September. Nobody can predict when that performance will actually happen, but the commission puts Nathan’s profession is perspective.
Eric Nathan: “Composition for me speaks about the present, to an audience of the future.” Rebecca Fay Photography
“My work as a composer is project-based, and the outcome not heard for months,” he says. “So I think, ‘What can I do now, as a composer?’
“Composition for me speaks about the present, to an audience in the future. The composition, what the performers add, and audience energy all bring the work alive,” he says. “Thinking about communities returning together gives me hope.”