Music during the Pandemic
At the beginning of the pandemic, all live concerts were canceled and the world was filled with uncertainty.
So the orchestra ensemble I work at, Phoenix Ensemble, came up with this brilliant idea of an online concert series called “Phoenix From the Nest,” where musicians perform from their living room and stream the concert via zoom on Twitch.
In September 2020, Phoenix came up with the most marvelous concert idea ever: “The Chronophone”.
Throughout the concert year 2020-2021, the musicians in Phoenix presented 16 episodes of Western music survey, performed pieces from 1600 all the way to the present day. We streamed the concert on Twitch and invited different musicians to go online and watch the pre-recorded performance together and interact with the audience in real-time.
Besides Phoenix, Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra also made a graceful transition from in-person concerts to streaming our recorded concert performances on YouTube. To accommodate the Covid-19 protocols, we collaborated with local venues such as the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, Heritage Museums & Gardens, and the Yarmouth New Church.
I was also invited by the music series co-founders, soprano Tamra Jones and oboist Amanda Hardy, in December 2020, to join a newly formed “St. Mary’s Quarantine Series” where musicians record our concerts at the St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Dorchester, MA, and stream the concerts on YouTube. As the Pandemic has come to an end (fingers crossed), the concert series has been renamed “Music on Jone’s Hill,” and we have been giving in-person outdoor concerts since summer 2021.