Barry Shiffman, at the Banff Center
For the first time since 1981, there will be no Rockport Chamber Music Festival this summer. Joining nearly every performing arts organization in North America and beyond, Rockport Music has announced that this summer’s festival—including its August Annex concerts—will not take place as planned.
Artistic director Barry Shiffman spoke about the cancellation from his home in Toronto, where he is healthy and distancing with his wife and two daughters.
“We are planning for multiple scenarios,” he says, assessing the future of RCMF, and wondering when concerts might begin again. He says that the 2021 festival will include some of the cancelled programs, but not all.
“It won’t be 2020 intact,” he says. “We’ll salvage some of the highlights.”
The RCMF 2020 gala—June 27th—remains uncanceled. Pianist Marc-André Hamelin will perform, live from the Shalin Liu Performance Center stage. Hamelin will perform Schubert’s B-flat major sonata, among other works. His audience won’t be there though—not in person, at least.
It’s a free concert for viewers, via Facebook and YouTube, in addition to raising money for RCMF. Holding a free fund-raising event may sound counterintuitive, but it follows an industry trend that began even before the pandemic—opening gala celebrations to the public, virtually.
“There’s something exciting about that,” Shiffman says. “The democratization of the gala. Marc-André will be in the hall when the gala culminates. We’re looking forward to how that echoes with our audience.”
The larger performing arts picture finds Shiffman just like everyone else—powerless to plan or perform. “It’s been surreal,” he says. “I have struggled to stay motivated, and feeling helpless.”
Shiffman sees the music industry from many sides. His days of touring as second violinist of the St. Lawrence String Quartet are over, but not his deep involvement as a teacher, performer, and administrator. He’s an associate dean at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory, where he also directs chamber music at the Glenn Gould School. He also oversees programs and competitions at the Banff Centre, where St. Lawrence first met in the early ’90s.
“I wear many hats,” he says. “I’ve seen this crisis unfold in Rockport, but also at the Royal Conservatory, and in Banff—places I work with on a daily basis. Canceling Rockport is hard. But Banff is in the middle of a national park—which is closed. The Banff Center laid off 80 percent of its staff, and the unemployment rate in the town is over 90 percent.”
Shiffman, like most, won’t speculate on who will survive the stoppage. But he believes, at some point in the future, artists will perform in concerts halls.
“I love Glenn Gould,” he says, referring to the habitually reclusive pianist. “I teach at the Glenn Gould Conservatory after all. But he had it wrong. Music does not work without an audience.
“When I think about the core of success in Rockport, of course it’s great music. But that’s a means to an end. The coming together of people made it all happen. The mingle was just as important as the performance.
“We have to be able to be moved together,” he says, “and that’s not going to happen without live music-making.”
While the long-lasting implications for the most presenters seem hazy and dire, Rockport Music has just finishing a capital campaign that buttressed its endowment and operating funds. The organization is more solid than most; others are not so fortunate.
“This is a brutal, indiscriminate culling in the industry,” Shiffman says. “Perhaps the strong will survive, but some of the strong will be culled. The big ones will survive. But some of the most artistically interesting are some of the most vulnerable.
“I know a number of exceptional artists who have no medical insurance, no resources in the bank, who don’t have access to studios,” he says. “Colleagues and friends, who went from joyous—overnight—to paycheck-to-mouth.
“Could we be faced with a doomsday, when the concert-going doesn’t recover?” he asks. “We could be faced with all sorts of things. It’s reminded us how fragile our peaceful life is. We’re always under the threat of calamity. But I think we will recover from it.
“I was amazed at the speed with which the artistic community started producing content online,” he notes. “Whether the art is any good is up in the air. But artists feel compelled to continue communicating.”