What a year! If you’re a musician or a music fan, you probably remember the last live concert you attended or performed before Covid-19 shut down the country in March. Mine was on March 10: My granddaughter’s middle school orchestra concert.
Looking back, I realized that my annual “best of the year” in performances could only apply to the 10 weeks before we were locked down. So I wrote my Year in Review column for the Business Courier in two parts, as BC — Before Covid — and after.
There were some unforgettable shows during both periods. In the second half — a season of screens — I am still enthralled by the Sept. 26 CSO digital program streamed from Music Hall, conducted by Louis Langrée. Gorgeous-voiced soprano Angel Blue gave an emotional performance of Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” a piece rarely heard. And what a treat it was to hear Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” as originally scored for 13 instruments.
And in a rare live performance by Cincinnati Ballet outdoors at Sawyer Point, I loved a new work for four dancers, choreographed (and danced) to Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat (fourth movement) by soloist David
Morse. It was thrilling to see the exuberance and strength, the lifts and turns of the entire company. The program was enhanced by performances by a CSO quartet and Cincinnati Opera singers Victoria Okafor and Maria Miller.
You can read that column here (it’s free).
Earlier this year, local critic and retired opera singer Rafael de Acha asked people in the arts to answer the question, “What have you been during during the pandemic?” for his blog, rafaelmusicnotes.com.
I thank him for that, because it made me look back at how I had the opportunity to document the impact of the pandemic on our arts community in the pages of the Business Courier. Here is some of that column:
After the pandemic hit, I mapped out a kind of series. The first one was about live music in bars. Cincinnati has a lively scene of music by local singer-songwriters and musicians, some of them classically trained. When I began interviewing them, they were still live-streaming programs for tips from the bars, which were closed. By the time the story ran, we were on full lockdown and they were playing for tips from their basement studios. They are workers in the “gig” economy. I admire their perseverance and talent, as well as the willingness of the owners and managers at places like Fishbowl at the Banks to try to help them.
My second story was how the pandemic was impacting our large arts organizations. Here’s a snapshot of what we knew in early April:
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra was unable to complete its 125th season; Playhouse in the Park canceled productions and furloughed seasonal staff; The Contemporary Arts Center canceled its This Time Tomorrow performing arts festival in April; The May Festival canceled its entire season (May 21-31); Each month that Cincinnati Museum Center is closed equates to a $2 million loss in revenue; ArtsWave was midway through its annual campaign, which depends heavily on workplace giving. With $7 million of its $12.4 million goal raised at the time, it extended the campaign from April 30 to June 1.
Next came the smaller arts institutions – the smaller orchestras, museums and theaters. Here’s the “nut graph” for that: Since mid-March, more than 200 arts events in Greater Cincinnati have been canceled through May. Several hundred artists and arts professionals have been laid off, furloughed or taken pay cuts. Arts organizations face an uncertain future and are planning ahead with multiple scenarios.
I’ve written about how people in the arts have performed acts of kindness, making face masks for frontline workers, and bringing food to those in need.
Then, I decided to see if artists were creating “pandemic art.” Indeed, they were. Tina Gutierrez has been photographing local people in a “coronavirus art response project,” asking them to respond to stay-in-place orders and social distancing with costumes and wearable art.
Arts philanthropist Sara Vance Waddell has been collecting incredible, artist-made face masks, featured in a show called “The Masks We Wear” at Pendleton Street Photography gallery.
In a musical response to the pandemic, the CSO announced its Fanfare project – echoing the one during World War II that resulted in Fanfare for the Common Man.
I was inundated with surveys. When will you be ready to return to live performances in concert halls? When will you be ready to be shoulder-to-shoulder with others in a museum or a theater? That resulted in an article about surveys, concluding that people here are eager to return, but wary.
My smaller columns have been newsy – such as how Cincinnati Opera made a documentary with CET to hail its 100th anniversary season, which of course, had to be canceled. And how the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra put on an actual show in a Fort Thomas park for a socially-distanced audience. Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra musicians performed outdoors on the new “art climb” for opening weekend at Cincinnati Art Museum. The latest: Cincinnati’s largest theaters hope to reopen this winter, God willing.
In August I held a virtual round table discussion with local choral directors about how choral groups are getting through the pandemic, following national news that singing in a chorus could be deadly. Thankfully, they are optimistic and planning ahead with proper protocols.
My mother, 92, a San Francisco native, says all of this reminds her of wartime. Her generation lived through so much more than this, and it lasted for years, not months. When the war ended, they rebuilt their lives, with strength and optimism. We can only hope the same for ourselves.
Here are the links to the articles mentioned above:
https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2020/04/03/virtual-reality-unpaid-musicians-turn-to.html
https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2020/08/28/choral-directors-get-creative.html
Note: The “Arts Front” on bizjournals.com/Cincinnati is free. However, if you read more than three stories, you may be asked to register for a FREE subscription.
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