by David Patrick Stearns

Classical music activities are developing at such a speed that last week seems like last year. And the era of packed concert halls, not so long in the past, feels like history — as the online presence among artists and institutions enter a fascinating though haphazard “wild west” phase of activity.

The range, alone, is dizzying — as are the technical glitches. Angel Blue’s Facebook talk show, Faithful Friday, arrived in a rotated screen picture showing the horizontal image in vertical form (Blue is such a charming screen presence that it almost didn’t matter). The March 27 “Music Never Sleeps NYC” 24-hour telethon organized by one of the best cellists out there (Jan Vogler), had musicians beamed in from their respective homes, including significant discoveries such as the Hong Kong–born pianist Tiffany Poon, but also lots of bad microphone placements and new music that had been admittedly assembled quickly over a few pints of ice cream and whiskey.

So far, nothing has approached the embarrassment factor of the quarantine meditations from Madonna’s bathtub. But is this classical music’s brave new world? A temporary novelty? A dead end? And will there be some viable mechanism for getting the artists paid?

The so-called “confinement concerto” phenomenon — when individual musicians play from home on video and are then edited together — is in the “temporary novelty” category, pending the availability of readily-available, more-viable technology. The reason the music is so heavily cut in the Rotterdam Philharmonic’s video of Beethoven’s Ninth, Chicago Civic Orchestra’s take on Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, and the New York Philharmonic’s Bolero is because such projects aren’t as simple as people playing to each other from separate apartments over conference technology. I tried that myself on Zoom, jamming with two other friends in a guitar / pennywhistle combination, and it was a mess because of the audio lag. Somewhere, there’s probably a technology out there that wouldn’t require such intensive editing. But these are improvisatory times. Orchestras are looking at a financial abyss and their public image needs to be maintained — now.

The other question is what kind of content registers on the small screen, particularly with anything new. We all know how Beethoven and Tchaikovsky sound in concert-hall circumstances. Even if, in his 6X in the Living Room Concerts, Czech violinist Pavel Sporcl plays something you’ve never heard, it still uses a traditional musical vocabulary, and one that is presented in the highly-distilled genre that is chamber music. What about music written with a more experimental vocabulary that’s attempting to convey an entire world within the piece?

Two case histories: A newly created environmental opera titled Sweet Land from a group called Industry that put on this immersive, environmental piece at Los Angeles State Historic Park, shot on March 15 and then released roughly two weeks later. Then there’s the Beth Morrison Projects stream of the Michael Gordon / Deborah Artman opera Acquanetta that was shot two years ago in Brooklyn and is of several videos that have been made available online in recent weeks.

Politically, I’m thoroughly sympathetic to the high-concept Sweet Land, composed by Raven Chacon and Du Yun, who respectively draw on their Native American and Chinese heritages, and deal with how badly those ethnic groups have been treated in this country. I love the idea of performances in the outdoor setting with, among other things, surtitles inventively projected onto the side of a nearby train bridge. The opening seconds promised something of a ritual about “shadows becoming flesh … echoes becoming voice.” I love that even more.

But when starting the video, it seemed my computer had been hacked with a bewildering flood of images and sound in an opera that has lots of simultaneous threads. Humanoid characters glower into the camera with mocking laughter. Quasi-exotic costumes, perhaps evocative when seen from a distance, resemble a Renaissance faire that had been shredded by timber wolves. Vocalizing meant for outdoors registered strangely indoors. Though I went back for a second hearing and found many more cogent elements, I was still puzzled by how my impression could be so different from that of the mightily-impressed LA Times music critic Mark Swed. Well, he had been to the live performances — the memory of experiencing the piece in its original environment perhaps allowed him to extrapolate what the video didn’t capture, since any relay medium can be surprisingly selective on what elements come to the fore.

Acquanetta would seem to be more promising candidate: Michael Gordon’s minimalist-based, guitar-driven score operates in broad strokes rather than the multi-level collages of Sweet Land. Indeed, it registers well online. The Acquanetta story, about a 1940s horror movie star, was originally seen mostly on a video screen with the singers beamed in live from an enclosed studio located on the side of the stage. So most of the opera is on screen to begin with. Problem is that the entire package keeps you guessing — starting with opening moments that focus on a single eyeball at great length.

That wasn’t a problem when I saw Acquanetta live two years ago, because the images had visceral appeal that didn’t require explanation. But webcasts demand to be understood on a certain basic level. What are we looking at and why? Acquanetta evolved into a story of how human beings are made over into a Hollywood commodity. Later, there was a Manson-like murder scene — complete with buckets of popcorn soaked in blood. Again, I admired the theatrical accomplishment when I saw it in person. But now I ask “Why I’m being put through all of this?”

Ideally, new pieces will be conceived specifically for the internet medium — one extremely promising possibility coming from the Kamala Sankaram virtual-reality opera The Parksville Murders. Its pilot segment by Opera on Tap, created well before the current pandemic, uses the enhanced atmosphere of the medium and the lightning-fast cinematic changes to convey a lurid, David Lynch–style story of macabre activities in small-town America — even when seen on a computer without VR hardware. A second segment is reportedly in the works, though that, ironically, impeded by the quarantine shutdown. They’ll find a way — if the proper financing comes through.

While the developing array of online music-sharing possibilities may be bolstering spirits for the time being, what about the financial side of things?

With the world-wide economy threatening to collapse, nobody knows what the money end will look like. Already, mechanisms are being put into place for artists whose financial lives are suddenly veering toward bankruptcy. The more secure of these mechanisms is when the money arrives at the beginning of the creative process. The website hireartists.org has been established as a clearing house for artists offering services ranging from portrait painting to screenwriting critiques. In England, #OperaHarmony, an organization with a long history and wide network, is pairing composers and librettists to write micro operas — or, in their terminology, “operitas” — to be conceived for and performed online. The money part, though, comes in the form of prizes for the best ones, presumably given out at the end of the process.

Longtime modern-music champion Jennifer Koh is having some 21 composers — including major names such as Andrew Norman and Missy Mazzoli (now Chicago Symphony Orchestra composer-in-residence) — writing solo violin pieces as short as 30 seconds, many of them paid the going rate of $500. My first reaction to this “Alone Together” project was that fewer composers, longer pieces, and more money for each would be a more helpful model.

Not so, said Mazzoli in an email: “I think a $500 commission is a good amount of money at this time. I like that she [Jennifer] is commissioning lots of people …. To be clear, I am donating my commission fee so that a younger composer, Cassie Weiland, can be commissioned as well.” A selection of premieres will be played at 7 pm on Saturdays on Instagram and Facebook Live, with later availability on YouTube.

Among more complex situations, the cyber element has opened up some gray areas in labor union circles. Major orchestras including the New York Philharmonic have successfully negotiated opening its archives of past concerts. That maintains the institution’s visibility and gives listeners a chance to revisit performances that you previously thought would only exist in your memory. But Actors Equity Association shut down a webcast reading of the 17th-century John Ford play ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore by New York’s Red Bull Theater on March 30. A surprise indeed, since Red Bull apparently never guessed that Equity had authority in cyberspace. All actors were being paid an honorarium, but Equity apparently set terms that Red Bull Theater couldn’t meet (details were not made available).

On the consumer end, the temporarily free availability of the Metropolitan Opera HD simulcasts and the Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Box Office may be creating expectations that we shouldn’t have to pay for anything.

Pavel Sporcl’s aforementioned 6x In The Living Room concerts from his own Sporcl Arts Agency in Prague had a $6 admission fee. Despite the violinist’s huge crossover appeal in Europe, ticket sales were in the hundreds. He considered that good, but hardly comparable to the 59,000 viewers he has had on Facebook, which doesn’t allow payments for livestreams. Yes, finding an easily-accessed financial platform is part of the problem. Now, he is partnering with The Violin Channel for a 3 pm EDT April 10 performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, still played from his living room but to a pre-recorded orchestra track. Sweet Land represents the boldest financial endeavor so far — it has an admission price of $14.99. It’s too early to tell how it’s faring, though its niche-appeal could turn into more of a strength than a limitation: It’s an unprecedented experience, unlike anything you’ll find in the temporarily free Met Opera and Berlin Phil archives.

How sustainable are any of these models? Anybody who claims to know is probably not to be trusted. Just as the financial world has changed radically over the past month, the next month is likely to look even more different in ways we can’t predict. Each new week, after all, is also a new world. There are basically two kinds of people at this point: Those actively struggling against the virus and those who are keeping away from it. And who knows what either side is going to need in the coming weeks.

Via