2021 Musician Interview

Emilie-Anne Gendron

Musicians Reflect on the Pandemic

Tell us about your normal, pre-pandemic life:

In my non-pandemic life, I juggle a variety of performing and recording commitments as a mobile freelance musician based in New York City. (Being a freelancer means being totally responsible for your own calendar and traveling, which means a lot of emails, strategizing, negotiating, scheduling, re-scheduling, and general admin. When I am not doing admin or practicing, I would say I play around 3-6 concerts or recordings per month during the typical September-June season, though it can be a lot more or less depending on who knows what…if anyone figures out what, let me know!) My string quartet, the Momenta Quartet, collaborates frequently with living composers and explores music from a wide variety of aesthetics and time periods. We self-produce a four-concert Momenta Festival in NYC every fall, where each of us has carte blanche to curate an evening of music. We have a circuit that includes recurring residencies at institutions such as Binghamton, Brown, and Cornell Universities, and Bates, Williams, Haverford, and Simons Rock Colleges, to name a few. Some of the most rewarding work we do is guiding student composers, many of whom are just beginning to explore the endless possibilities, and occasional pitfalls, of the string quartet medium. Other groups I play in include A Far Cry, Argento Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Princeton Symphony, Orpheus, Sejong Soloists, and IRIS Orchestra. I am a founding member of both the Gamut Bach Ensemble (dedicated to Bach) and Ensemble Échappé (dedicated to 21st-century music), so I cast a wide net with my musical interests. In the summers I usually have a handful of festivals I might participate in: for example playing chamber music at the Marlboro festival in Vermont, or working with composers and coaching student ensembles at the Brandeis University Composers Conference, and of course, MSCM, which I can’t wait to return to.

Tell us about how your 2020-2021 concert season has been. As you adjusted to pandemic living, did gigs come back at all? Did you dive into more virtual work? Find something else to keep you busy entirely?

The 2020-21 season started off with a handful of outdoor and virtual/remote gigs, and has become increasingly busy, as virtual projects mix with the in-person work that is quite rapidly returning to the NYC area. I generally evaded the home-recording craze that took over the earlier part of the pandemic; nevertheless I did manage to finally learn the basics of video and sound editing (with thanks to the ever-patient teacher Google, who fielded some pretty incoherent questions from me early on). This season has seen an explosion of virtual and streaming performance projects, which just illuminates the creativity and perseverance of our colleagues in the performing arts community. Among the several activities I was involved in this season, two collaborations stand out in particular: my quartet’s Virtual Momenta Festival presented by the Americas Society, and participating in an online concert series, Jukebox Concerts, created by my dear friend and colleague (and fellow MSCM violinist) Keiko Tokunaga.

Were there unexpected silver linings for you amidst the upheaval, anxiety, and loss of the past year?

Emilie-Anne at the Barn. Photo credit: Simon Powis

This past season, there were some projects I participated in that actually couldn’t have come together without the benefit of remote interaction. One was a series of interactive educational performances with the Toomai String Quintet, presented by the music education nonprofit Midori and Friends for multiple NYC public schools. Toomai was scattered across the country in the wake of the pandemic, but thanks to programs like Zoom and Google Meet, we were able to collaborate and connect with a large number of students. I’ve also done several remote composition workshops this season in collaboration with Binghamton University, Ithaca College, and Juilliard, with students tuning in from places as far-flung as LA and Tehran, which wouldn’t have been possible before the advent of Zoom. I also joined the roster of SoundScore, a virtual platform connecting performers with composers looking to workshop and record their works.

On a personal level, I was finally able to clean out my Gmail inbox…

Do you have apprehensions about whether people will return to concert halls? What do you think the post-pandemic concert experience might be like?

At least where I am in the NYC area, it feels like everyone’s ready to return to concerts! I’m reminded of the resurgence of culture and arts in the Roaring Twenties after the 1918 pandemic (though that also makes me think of the ensuing Great Depression, so maybe that’s enough history for now). I do think we’re all pretty burned out with the limitations of screens and virtual engagement; there’s no substitute for the collective thrill and exchange of energy that happens with live performing. I wonder if the post-pandemic concert experience will continue to include a lot more outdoor performance options when weather allows. Although playing outside can be risky on the performers’ end (wind, precipitation, humidity, bugs, loud motorcycles), it can feel festive and fun when the weather is nice, and seems to be a big hit with audiences these days.

Visit Emilie-Anne’s website.

Read the other musician interviews.

Lorna Tsai

Sage Cole

Verena Sennekamp

Musicians Reflect on the Pandemic

Tell us about your normal, pre-pandemic life:

My pre-pandemic life was basically based on three pillars which all shaped my daily life: teaching, playing concerts, and organizing the concert series “Nonnenwerther Inselkonzerte” which takes place on a beautiful island on the rhine river near Bonn. Throughout the year the activities for each project varied in intensity, but all of this was continuously present in my daily life.

Tell us about how your life changed last March, were there momentous concerts or events that were canceled, did you dive into virtual projects? Try to just wait it out? Enjoy the time off from your instrument and career pressures?

The first project that got cancelled last year in March was a concert tour to the US West Coast. Since I hadn’t travelled much on the west coast ever before, I was particularly sad about this cancellation, because I had some really nice travel plans for after finishing my concerts.

When everything suddenly stopped there was a part of me that felt a big sense of freedom and excitement about the opportunity to look into some ideas that I had in the back of my head I I never had time to do. Surprisingly I had quite a number of ideas which circled around the possibilities of presenting musical content digitally and I embraced the opportunity to get more familiar with recording technology, digital platforms (youtube, instagram) and audio/video editing. I bought a bit of equipment and learned a lot! For the first few weeks my apartment looked like a recording studio. It was full of cables and mics, audio interface etc. and I watched uncounted numbers of you tube tutorials. It was kind of fun. I came up with two formats that I presented on youtube:

“Music Postcards“: I recorded short pieces of Bach Solo Suites for cello all by myself in empty churches and combined the music with a spoken introduction about the music and particular ideas that Bach used in the movements that I recorded.
“Practice Hacks“: a format targeted at my students who were sitting at home trying to keep practicing and improving while I could only offer digital lessons with terrible sound and frequent video interruptions. The “practice hacks” are a series of short video tutorials talking about how to structure your work, how to practice more effectively and also about specific questions in string and cello playing.

I never felt like taking time off my instrument. I did throw most of the repertoire aside that I was supposed to play over the next few months. Instead, I chose pieces which I had always wanted to learn and never found the time to do so. I am still doing this and it feels a bit like being back in my student times, when I could choose any piece I wanted to learn and start working on it with no real deadline. Especially for very challenging pieces which need time to grow, it is wonderful to sit down and practice without time pressure.

I played a few concerts in Austria in the summer of 2020 when the pandemic cooled down a bit. Austria was much more proactive than Germany or other countries in starting concerts again after the first lockdown. I am still really impressed with the Salzburger Festspiele who ran the Festspiel live in the summer of 2020 under strict hygiene conditions. I happened to have a concert around that time in Austria and I went to two Salzburg Festival concerts as an audience member. It was fantastic to hear live music and feel how happy everybody was – musicians and audience – to be there.

After the summer there was very little chance to play, but I realized that the conservatory that I was teaching at (BFSM Dinkeslbuehl) was so hopelessly backwards in its digital development, that there really need some work to be done to provide some kind of valuable education to our students if we had to deal with the pandemic for a longer time. Over the summer it was possible to teach live, but it was clear that we would have to go back to digital as soon as there was a new wave of the pandemic. My somewhat extreme learning curve in digital media and computer technology during the first wave had taught me one thing: it is not so hard to learn how to handle technology, to learn new systems and to set up collaboration platforms, video conference tools or whatever it is you need to move things into the virtual space. As I realized that there was nobody else around at my school who would be willing or able to this, I took up the position of an IT Admin and introduced digital teaching technologies to the BFSM. It was a lucky coincidence that a new dean took over the school in fall 2020. Together with him we have to opportunity to rethink and reshape the school, with digital development being one of the core aspects of setting the school up for the future.

How has this crisis affected the way you feel about your profession? The arts in general? Has it inspired you to find new ways to connect with audiences and reaffirm your passion, or has it brought about a realization that there are other ways you might like to spend your time…

The crisis moved arts and music entirely into the digital space. I have to admit that I am not really interested in consuming music or art online. Even though there has been plenty of opportunities to watch great performances, it doesn’t attract me at all. I began to wonder why I can’t get excited about any of those fantastic digital offers. I suspect that art is much more of a social and collective activity than I was aware of before and that a live concert stimulates much more than our ears and eyes. Live music concerts strongly benefit from the atmosphere and from the fact that every single live music event is unique and irretrievable. If we are at an exciting live concert, there is really a spark in the concert hall. As a musician on stage we get this strong sense of attention and excitement from your audience that you can connect to. As an audience member you can connect to whatever is going on on-stage, but also to the vibes around you. There are numerous aspects like location, audience mix, music style, concert format, etc, which all influence our senses. I think that a live concert is such a complex mix of stimulation of our senses as well as a social stimulation that any digital offer which we can only consume alone at home will sadly lag behind. As a result I am more fond than ever of live music events!

Did you find solace in music? What kind of music have you been listening to or playing?

Most of the repertoire that I picked to practice and work on during the lockdown are pieces that are really close to my heart. One example is the sixth Suite for Cello solo by Johann Sebastian Bach, a piece originally written for cello piccolo with 5 strings. It takes time to make it sound easy and beautiful on a regular cello with 4 strings, but it is such good music that I enjoy every minute of my time with it.

Another opportunity came through a friend who suggested to play Rachmaninov Sonata together. Since we work together anyway, we were part of the same “bubble” and therefore decided that it wouldn’t be an extra risk to play together. In our profession rehearsal time is usually quite limited and pieces go on stage with a few hours of rehearsal. It is a totally different and unique experience to actually spend time on lots of details, try many options, change your mind about things and really immerse into a rehearsal process.

Were there unexpected silver linings for you amidst the upheaval, anxiety, and loss of the past year?

I am organizing a concert series in Germany and I have to say that I was extremely impressed with our audience when it came to the all the sudden concert cancellations at the beginning of the pandemic and later again when we had to deal with long term lockdown consequences. In the first phase of the lockdown, we asked people to keep their tickets and wait for the postponement dates so that we wouldn’t have to go through a huge act of administration, first refunding then selling tickets again. Out of 250 – 300 tickets that people were holding for various concerts, only 6 people asked their money back. This was a huge act of solidarity towards the artists and the concert series and I was very, very grateful. Later on, when we tried to schedule concerts for late summer and fall but had to cancel most of them again due to the second wave, our audience started to ask whether they could donate their tickets for the artists. We created a donation fund for all the artists that we had invited in 2020 and who couldn’t play their concerts. Again, I was overwhelmed with the response from our audience, not only in terms of donations but also in terms of emails that reached us to express support and compassion.

Visit Verena’s website.

Read the other musician interviews.

Lorna Tsai

Sage Cole

Emilie-Anne Gendron

Sage Cole

Musicians Reflect on the Pandemic

Tell us about your normal, pre-pandemic life:

In addition to being co-director of MSCM, I am on the faculty of Silver Music in New York City, where I teach violin and am the violin/viola coordinator for the school. As we are a Suzuki school, our program includes private lessons as well as Suzuki group classes, and I teach both for a total of about 15-20 hours a week. I also meet with interested families and discuss with them the joys and demands of having your young child study a string instrument–there are an overwhelming amount of demands, but I think the joys outweigh them or I wouldn’t be doing this!

Being an artistic director of MSCM is a year-long commitment as we start planning our summers in October. There are so many facets to organize from the musicians and the music, to the venues, the hosts, and even the transportation for the musicians—including myself. Very few of us own cars, so booking rental cars nice and early is just one of the many mundane tasks we have on our to-do list.

The rest of my time is filled largely with caretaking for my young boys (ages 4 and 20 months). I only had four months as a mother of two before the pandemic hit, so my experience of mothering two is almost completely entwined with shut down life—for better and worse.

Tell us about how your life changed in March 2020:

As I am not primarily a performer, I was lucky to not lose any work during the shut-down. All of my teaching moved online which was certainly a challenge, but it was such a relief to still have work—particularly as I was surrounded by so many friends who had suddenly lost all of their income. I felt very grateful, even as I navigated the frustrations of trying to connect with kids as young as four-years-old over Zoom!

Teaching the old fashioned way, pre-pandemic

Did you find solace in music? What kind of music have you been listening to or playing?

My listening was largely dictated by my four year old, Elliott, and it consisted of a heavy rotation of Peter and the Wolf, The Magic Flute, The Nutcracker, and The Music Man. All quite uplifting, so yes, I would say there was solace there!

Were there unexpected silver linings for you amidst the upheaval, anxiety, and loss of the past year?

My family life was a large silver lining. Getting to spend so much time with our kids has been truly wonderful–even as the constant demands of childcare and work in the midst of a pandemic have been exhausting.

Do you have apprehensions about whether people will return to concert halls? What do you think the post-pandemic concert experience might be like?

I think people will come back to the concert halls. I think people are ready to celebrate the success of our vaccinations and enjoy the artistic and social aspects of live performances again. Although the pre-pandemic anxiety of suffering a random coughing attack in the middle of a performance may be quite heightened in the current circumstances! Still, while this year has shown us how much can be accomplished virtually, it’s also highlighted intangibles of live performances—the electricity from the performers, the buzz of the audience, and beauty of the venues—and the excitement of simply not being on your couch!

Read Keith Powers’ article – Artists Alone: Sage Cole, co-founder of Manchester Summer Chamber Music

Read the other musician interviews.

Lorna Tsai

Verena Sennekamp

Emilie-Anne Gendron

Lorna Tsai

Musicians Reflect on the Pandemic

Tell us about your normal, pre-pandemic life:

As Principal Second Violin of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, I typically average around 3 concerts a week with a 40 week season. We do a variety of programming – our season is incredibly varied – we do Pops shows (think hits of Pink Floyd), we do a few operas with the Calgary Opera and work with the Alberta Ballet as well. When COVID hit, I was finishing up my ninth year with the orchestra and we were about to perform the soundtrack to one of the Harry Potter movies (not easy by the way). The nine years in the orchestra had taken its toll on my body and I had to take some time off from work the year before to address ongoing soft tissue injuries from years of violin playing (the violin is not exactly kind on one’s body). Since I was feeling burned out of trying to constantly be ready to play, I embraced the time off with gusto. I think it’s always been a fear of mine to take time away from the violin. The knowledge that one week off means one week just to get back to where I was before I took the time off on top of the time to learn new ever changing repertoire! Typically, when I wasn’t playing the violin, I was spending the time trying to heal my body from playing the violin. Or I was frantically learning new repertoire quickly. So faced with the freedom of not working, I knew I wanted to embrace the opportunity since I saw it as a (hopefully) rare event.

As artistic director of MSCM, I would often be thinking of possible program ideas throughout the year. But since we are a small organization, our roles extend beyond just being artistic directors. We are also the treasurers, managers and assistants to the musicians, chauffeurs, cooks, cleaning crew. But being required to wear all these hats makes the job more interesting and without the festival, I definitely felt a big MSCM sized hole in my life. To fill that void, I embraced a COVID cliche – I got a puppy!

***Trying new things – Behind the scenes, as we try out red capes for our accompaniment of Little Red Riding Hood***

The 2020-2021 CPO Season was very different. In exchange for getting our full salary in the Fall, the orchestra asked for a number of concessions. One of them being more flexibility in changing the schedule. Under our existing Agreement, the orchestra is required to give the musicians about a month’s notice in any repertoire change, etc. Obviously, when the restrictions were changing every few weeks, this was not going to be feasible. Like many in the service industry, we learned how hard it was to change gears to accommodate for each amendment in restrictions. Each change required weeks of planning, only to be thrown out the window by some new announcement. While the orchestra had been initially optimistic that we would be back in the Fall, it became clear that we would have to change strategies and plan on doing video recordings of chamber works. (Chamber works to meet the social distancing requirements, of course.) In addition to the musicians, there are also always many people working behind the scenes to make things happen. The video crew, the sound crew, etc. So things were always shifting to make sure we were in compliance with the regulations. I think it was a learning experience for us to eventually plan for the “worst case” scenario. Organizing a program that fit the “worst case” scenario of restrictions was a better idea than trying to forecast an optimistic case. The season definitely kept us on our toes.

Did you find solace in music? What kind of music have you been listening to or playing?

During the crisis, I largely took a break from classical music. I mostly listened to Beyonce and Destiny’s Child on repeat, much to my boyfriend’s dismay. I have slowly waded back into the classical music pool on my own though recently and have found it incredibly refreshing.

Do you have apprehensions about whether people will return to concert halls? What do you think the post-pandemic concert experience might be like?

I do have apprehensions whether people will return to concert halls. I found myself at a crowded mall recently and all the restrictions had been lifted. About half the people were walking around without masks. It was liberating…but also left me feeling uneasy. That said, I think there is something irreplaceable about watching a live music concert, especially up-close live chamber music that is central to Manchester Summer Chamber Music’s mission.

Read about Lorna in Keith Powers’ article: Classical musicians finding ways to practice their craft during the pandemic