Music Monday - More Covid Curiosities

Earlier this year I wrote about a soprano in a Perth fringe show asking the audience, “Twenty years ago, who would have thought that in 2021 there would be more work for a singer in Perth, Western Australia than in London?”

Although the UK and USA are now opening up to live music performance again, here in Australia (where our state borders are still subject to closure as we try to curb the Delta variant of Covid-19) the phenomenon continues. Over the past few weeks here in Perth, there have been more performances and shows involving students and friends than I have had spare evenings to attend. 

Local commercial theatres, without bookings from the national touring companies, are more open to taking local bookings. Several WA based companies have sprung up, particularly in music theatre. These companies mostly operate on a ‘pro/am’ basis; they pay some or all the performers in principal roles, but the ensemble often do it for little / no monetary reward. 

There are also smaller companies who do shows on a profit-share basis.

Some graduating actors and music theatre students from WAAPA are planning to stay in Perth for the time being, seeing it as a place where there is some possibility of work. Until the pandemic that was unheard of – graduating performers always headed to the larger, more performance active cities of Melbourne and Sydney.

On a side, but connected, note – yesterday I adjudicated some vocal sections at a local, well-established eisteddfod. In chatting to the organizer at the start, he commented that the number of piano competitors was at a record-breaking high, but that they had never had so few singers. Later, as I drove home, I pondered that situation. Are all the singers in Perth now in rehearsal or performance for our plethora of shows? 

There is no doubt that it is good to see a much more active local performance scene here. (That must be one of the few positives of the pandemic.) There is a much stronger sense of a local arts community.

 And if we also keep our ears tuned to what is happening nationally and internationally, the future of music performance in Perth could be a healthier and more abundant one.

Music Monday - What will a post-Covid world look and sound like?

Back in February I attended a Perth fringe show featuring an opera singing friend and his soprano performance partner. While waiting in line to go in, our friends chatted about how lucky we were to live in such a remote capital city as Perth, where our annual fringe festival went ahead as usual. We laughed that the aspect of Perth that has always been perceived as its greatest disadvantage; namely its distance from other cities (it’s about as far as you can get from New York, for example), was in these strange new times, flipped to be perceived now as an advantage.

During the show, the soprano, who had migrated to Australia 20 years ago, commented that she would never have dreamed at the time she left a career in London, that 20 years later there would be more work for a singer in Perth, Western Australia, than in the UK or USA.

And this week, a player in WASO (Western Australian Symphony Orchestra) – not a large outfit by world standards – reported that, based on the statistics for the past 12 months, WASO was the busiest orchestra in the world. 

Strange times indeed.

I know of a music theatre performer, last engaged in a Broadway show which shut down at the start of the pandemic in 2020, who has retrained as a visual artist.

And only yesterday, at an ANATS (Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing) meeting, a colleague spoke of her friend and colleague in Scotland, a school music teacher, who has not been permitted to sing with her students, nor allow them to sing in class, for a year.

As the world now moves into the vaccination phase of the pandemic, and people become safer to start resuming a new normal, how will that look and sound for you?

For me, I have become much more tech-savvy over the past year – definitely through necessity rather than natural inclination. I think I have also learnt gratitude.

As I so often write on this blog, we are beyond lucky in Australia.  Our total number of lives (sadly) lost has been 900 rather than millions and our lockdowns (even taking into account the 100-day lockdown in Melbourne) have been minimal by world standards. I think we have all learned to be a bit more grateful.

Right now, Perth is in a week of additional restrictions. (We had 3 cases last weekend.) Until 8th May we have to wear a mask outside our home. Because we have been so spoilt, it feels uncomfortable and annoying. At the start of a singing lesson on Friday I asked a student how she was feeling about her mask. She said, “Every time I put it on, I think that it is a reminder to be grateful.” Wise words. 

There is no doubt that the music industry across the world, and even in Australia, has been hit hard by Covid. Where sporting events with thousands of spectators have often been allowed to go ahead, music venues have always been shut down. It was encouraging that our state government made a snap decision to close a football game to spectators yesterday (45,000 had been estimated to attend). If the risk is one of aerosol transmission, then 45,000 cheering supporters must be more risk than hundreds of seated patrons listening to music?

How do you see your world of music in the months and years ahead?