WILL LIVESTREAM KEEP LIVING ON?
After the pandemic forced venues to close, online concerts offered something close to a silver lining. Presenters have invested massively in streaming technology and want to put those investments to long-term use. But as audiences return, where does that leave concert streams?
Jeff Alexander will never forget March 12, 2020. Amid a month that would be studded with grim portents, that was the day Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Gov. J.B. Pritzker mandated an end to events attended by 1,000 or more people. For Alexander, the president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association, it was the surest sign of a shifting tide. The mayor and governor announced the restrictions in the early afternoon; the CSO rushed to relay the cancellation to ticketholders for its sold-out Bólero concert slated for just hours later.
“The initial announcement was a 30-day ban on public gatherings, which was eventually extended to 60 days. We all thought, ‘My goodness, that’s a very long time,’ ” Alexander remembers with a dark chuckle. “Of course, we were all naive.”
You know the rest. Much like the marquee piece that evening, cancellations only became more ubiquitous, more total. We waited for developments too long deferred, settling into the uneasy monotony of life without live music.
In a year all but bereft of upsides, streamed concerts have offered something close to a silver lining. They’ve flung open doors to otherwise inaccessible performances — whether fiscally or physically — and abetted novel performances that might not have happened otherwise, like a freewheeling Pauline Oliveros opera staged over Zoom last
April, cellist Seth Parker Woods’s audiovisually mouthwatering performance of a work inspired by The Chicago Defender (and composed by the inimitable Nathalie Joachim), and Spektral Quartet’s lineup of side-splitting, chin-stroking conversation series.
That Catch-22 isn’t lost on presenters. Over the past year, many have invested massively in streaming technology — gear, hosting platforms, licensing fees (in the case of re-aired or archival performances), and the like — and want to put those investments to long-term use. But with some venues prepared to start welcoming back audiences in accordance with Gov. Pritzker’s new “bridge” plan, where does that leave concert streams?
In many ways, it depends on how streaming-friendly said presenter was to begin with.
Prepandemic, streaming giants in the classical sphere included the Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s live series, and the Metropolitan Opera’s on-demand catalog. Until now, CSO leadership hasn’t had much of an incentive to follow suit, dropping live concert streams once in a blue moon. But after six months of experimenting with digital-first content, the orchestra changed its tune in September with the launch of CSOtv. The platform centralizes the orchestra’s digital programming in one hub, featuring the new on-demand CSO Sessions series — performed by masked and distanced musicians in Orchestra Hall — as its calling card.
Though the orchestra hasn’t finalized what future streaming endeavors might look like, Alexander suspects that concertlength performances for the small screen are “very likely” here to stay, seeing as CSO Sessions alone have garnered audiences in 27 countries and 52 U.S. states and territories.
That said, don’t expect a Detroit redux.
“Streaming is going to remain in our future, though probably not on as frequent a basis as we’re doing now,” Alexander says. “I don’t think we’ll make the leap to filming and streaming all of our subscription concerts, for example.”
Small but mighty
The pandemic forced many presenters to play catch-up, but not all. Experimental Sound Studio, a cutting-edge cultural stalwart in the city since 1986, was already streaming its Monday night Option Series when the venue halted live performances on March 16, 2020. Four days later, ESS’s first Quarantine Concert went live on YouTube; the series has since migrated to Twitch, a video-gaming broadcaster that has become a favorite streaming platform for the DIY set. Streams draw anywhere from 20 to 1,000 attendees; though anyone can watch for free, an ESS staffer periodically reminds attendees via live chat to donate what they can, with $5 as the suggested minimum. This virtual passing-of-the-hat has paid dividends: ESS was able to pay out $90,000 in donations to guest artists and curators in 2020 alone, once raising nearly $5,000 in a single evening.
“The way ESS has set up these ticket sales really serves the kind of artists who perform there,” says Matt Mehlan, manager of the ESS’s Creative Audio Archive. “Twitch feels funny and sort of punk; it’s being used in a way it’s not meant to be used. Even though it’s coming though this Amazon-owned channel, it has the right energy for this kind of subcultural activity.”
ESS managing director Adam Vida suspects that the success of the Quarantine Concerts also owes to their venturesomeness. Rather than attempt to replicate a live set, many of ESS’s artists have exploited the digital format to their advantage, turning the series into a testing ground for video art and meta-performances. For example, last May, Ensemble Uhhhhhmm (formerly known as Lil Jürg Frey, until the august Swiss experimentalist politely asked them to stop invoking his name) staged a Cagean sonic exploration via “Animal Crossing: New Horizons.”
“Something we learned very quickly is that you can’t imitate what live performances do. The format has a ton of potential we’re all just tapping into now,” Vida says.
For that reason, last December, ESS artistic staff made the decision to keep concert streams going for the rest of 2021. They’ve even invested in a mobile streaming rig, which ESS will lease out to other artists for a fee. The continued dedication to streaming is something of a no-brainer for the outfit, whose space in Edgewater can only accommodate a couple dozen attendees.
“It’s clear that the Quarantine Concerts have expanded our reach,” Vida says. “We’re not tied to a specific location. The experimental community — artists and audiences — is coming together from all over the world.”
That spirit of mutual boosterism also helped kickstart digital concerts at the University of Chicago Presents, another small presenter. After canceling in-person concerts, executive director Amy Iwano and the University of Chicago’s music department teamed up with streamingsavvy organizations like the Chamber Music Society of Detroit to plot a path forward. They settled on a plan: The Detroit presenter would lend out its streaming equipment, then other partnering organizations would contribute funds to go directly to the musicians, regardless of ticket sales.
“(The music department’s) view has been that we should do what we can do, rather than cry about what we can’t do,” Iwano says. “It was a steep learning curve for everyone, but I felt good that what little we could contribute was going directly to the music makers.”
Since then, UCP has only expanded its partnerships and streaming capacity. Typical UCP programming embraces mononymous jazz greats, Baroque bands and pipa virtuosi in the span of a single season; their digital concerts have been similarly polyglot, roving from prerecorded onsite concerts to performances filmed in locales as far flung as Honduras and Japan. Some streams are produced in-house by University of Chicago Presents, while others are licensed by another presenter, like Ian Bostridge’s Wigmore Hall recital later this month.
Iwano has been pleased by recent strides: Student attendance has spiked since concerts moved online, UCP’s Hyde Park-heavy audience has refracted into a global one (reaching audiences in 29 countries this season), and its SOUND/ SITES concerts have proved so successful that they’re already planning a few for next season.
On the other hand, the yearlong experiment has crystallized real hurdles ahead. If the collaborative goodwill between organizations evaporates alongside COVID-19 restrictions, a presenter of UCP’s size — five staff members strong, only two of whom, including Iwano, are full time — won’t have the resources to produce digital concerts on their own.
“Right now, a streamed concert that sells well will just about cover the cost, and we have to proof every second of the video,” Iwano says. “Even once live performances come back, I highly doubt we could offer livestreams because of our small staff.”
“I would like to continue streaming, because of accessibility and potential reach. But it’s hard to imagine us layering that on top of in-person concerts.”
Whither concert streams?
One might wonder: If not a possibility in the future, at least all those concert streams exist in perpetuity, and, if the presenter is able, will eventually appear on-demand. Right?
Not necessarily. First off, historically speaking, there’s no guarantee that the digital performances of the past year will be viewable to anyone in long-term. Given the constantly shifting landscape of recording and playback technology, sound archivists — like Mehlan at the ESS’s Creative Audio Archive — regularly agonize over how to conserve audiovisual recordings. In other words: Thanks to hardware and software obsolescence (planned and otherwise), the internet isn’t really “forever,” despite what you might tell your kids.
“The artifacts from this moment in time aren’t physical, they’re virtual. The thing is, we don’t know what happens to digital materials over a period of time. You can’t just put it on a shelf and forget about it,” explains Frank Villella, director of the CSO’s Rosenthal Archives.
Second, licensure and labor agreements make streaming a bit of a legal minefield, albeit less so during the pandemic. Last March, locals of the American Federation of Musicians ratified a temporary modification of the Integrated Media Agreement, a national contract standardizing musician compensation and rights surrounding multimedia content. Previously, the agreement set conservative guidelines on concert length and availability windows; the modified version — which holds until either June 2022 or the return of live performances, whichever comes first — offers new tiered compensation scales. These give presenters more flexibility for streaming formats and cut musicians beefier checks, especially amid salary cuts and reduced concert schedules.
Chicago Federation of Musicians president Terryl Jares suspects that the next Integrated Media Agreement to land in Local 10-208s lap will be much more streaming-friendly than previous iterations. After all, if done right, concert streams can be a boon to union musicians: Performers receive additional compensation for streams on top of their salary or live performance rates.
“Some people say, ‘We don’t ever want to stream, because it will take our live audience away.’ I don’t ever foresee that ever happening,” Jares says. “With streaming, arts organizations can not only sell out a house, but they could watch on-demand and buy a ticket for a discounted rate. It’s just another revenue stream.”
Now that necessity has nurtured a digital concert renaissance, and arts organizations are increasingly moving away from the polarized thinking that once made concert streams a nonstarter, the ball is in presenters’ court. Will they take a risk and funnel resources towards streams on the heels of a devastating fiscal year? Or will they divest from streaming, sacrificing accessibility and potential global reach as to sooner recoup their losses?
One thing is clear: Streaming is no longer something venues can continue to ignore or shuffle to the back burner. The Pandora’s box has been opened. The way we experience concerts will never be the same again.