During this pandemic crisis, many artists and musicians have been hurting financially because nearly all in-person concerts have been cancelled. It’s not just this past spring where events have been cancelled, we are looking towards the fall and beyond with no “live” musical events.
In fact, this past week, I received this notice from the Oahu Choral Society:
I guess this means that the Mozart Requiem, which I was contracted to play last April with the Oahu Choral Society, is not going to happen for awhile!
The folks at Early Music Hawaii, however, have planned a completely “virtual” season, with events being actually pre-recorded and released for a specific time period. The mainland ensembles which traditionally have flown to Hawaii for the Early Music Hawaii concerts, will instead release not previously available videos, to be broadcast online for a limited time period. (Disclaimer: I am the vice-president of Early Music Hawaii.)
President Ian Capps wrote:
We are acutely aware of the devastating effects of the pandemic on musicians who depend on concert audiences for survival. In a typical year, 70% of Early Music Hawaii’s incomes goes directly to local and visiting performers. So that this may continue we have designed our season around “virtual” performances by local artists and special online presentations by two fine mainland ensembles who were originally contracted to come to the Islands.
Here is the season brochure I designed, which will be mailed out to former subscribers and friends this week:
In fact, we are getting ready for the opening two concerts as I write this, with the first rehearsal scheduled for August 12th. Director Scott Fikse wanted to ensure that every one of the 8 performers feel absolutely safe, so he instituted the following protocol for rehearsals and the performances:
• Rehearsals will be held outdoors.
• Everyone will be wearing masks throughout the entire rehearsal in addition to performers being spaced at least 6′ apart
• Rehearsals will take place in 30-minute increments with a break to allow aerosols to disperse.
• Everyone will also be wearing masks during the performance, which will be in effect, during the recording sessions.
The “virtual” performances Early Music Hawaii has envisioned will be: musical segments interspersed with artwork plus short commentary on the music, in effect, a multi-media event.
The powers that be decided that our performances will not be livestreamed, but will be pre-recorded and then released. In one way, this is great, because not only will our performances be available to anyone in the world (not just people in Honolulu), it means that you won’t have to worry about people around you talking or coughing or opening up noisy cough drops!
However, there are a few disadvantages, as I brought up at our Zoom conference the other day with all the EMH musicians. The notion that something can be re-recorded if you make a mistake means that you tell yourself, “Oh, I’ll just do another take!” And you do another take, only to make a mistake in a different place! The more takes you make mean more and more mistakes! At least for me, the presence of a live audience gives you an adrenaline boost making you more accurate, which gives me a little edge over just another rehearsal, or another take!
While my body has been recuperating from the broken rib which I sustained during last week’s accident, I have been working on the Early Music Hawaii website which you can view here.