Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the beat goes on for orchestra percussionist Angela Nelson
In the pandemic-ravaged world, the opening night concert for the Philadelphia Orchestra Sept. 30 will hit a whole new note.
It’s the first time the musicians won’t be on stage at Verizon Hall. Instead, they’ll present a concert which was filmed last week from the Mann Music Center stage with no audience present.
“It’s a first for us,” said percussionist Angela Zator Nelson of Media, an orchestra member since 1999. “We’ve never played at the Mann Center later than July, and we’ve never had a filmed opening night concert until now.”
The program, conducted by Music Director Yannick NezetSeguin, includes selections Rossini, Verdi, Mozart and more. Soprano Angel Blue will sing a Rossini aria, and pianist Lang Lang will perform remotely.
The concert will also feature the first onstage performance of a piece commissioned by the Orchestra especially geared to the COVID-19 era. “Seven O’Clock Shout” by Valerie Coleman was written in honor of Covid-19 frontline workers.
“We cheer on the essential workers… to let them know that we stand with them and each other,” Coleman said.
There will also be a virtual collaboration with Grammy-awardwinning musician and actor Steve Martin, who will play the banjo on his piece titled “Rare Bird Alert.”
Nelson will take part in several pieces on the program. For “The Seven O’Clock Shout,” she’ll play the vibraphone and marimba. For Rossini’s overture, she’ll play the snare drum and for the Steve Martin piece, it will be the cajon.
“It’s a wooden box that I’ll sit on and that creates different tones that sound like a drum” said Nelson.
As a percussionist, she’s an expert at performing on an array of instruments, from drums to castanets to cymbals and more.
Still, the Steve Martin piece presented a new challenge.
“In the spring, we each had to record our own parts at home, and then it was pieced together so that we all were pictured on the same screen,” she explained. “It’s the first time we ever prepared like that, and it wasn’t easy.”
It’s also the first time that the music stopped abruptly for the Philadelphia Orchestra musicians. Last season, concerts were
cancelled by mid March because of the pandemic. The last subscription concert with an audience was March 7.
“At that point, we didn’t know the magnitude of Covid,” said Nelson.
By the next week, they did. The March 12 subscription concert was recorded and broadcast, but without an audience. A concert at Carnegie Hall the following evening was cancelled.
Then came a long stretch with no concerts. To keep in shape musically, Nelson practiced regularly at home in Media.
She also did recordings with small musical groups doing specialized online programs. One was a children’s concert in the orchestra’s “Sound All Around” series. Each concert features one group of instruments and this one was focused on percussion.
“That took a lot of time to put together,” said Nelson, who edited the entire program herself using IMovie.
“It took one month to put together a 10 minute program,” she said. “The learning curve was very steep. As performing musicians, we’re not used to recording programs ourselves.”
Angela Nelson is not the only musician in the family. Husband David Nelson is also a percussionist who freelances for varied musical organizations including the Philly Pops and also teaches in the music department of West Chester University.
His musical activities also stopped because of the pandemic, except for one recorded Philly Pops concert on July 4.
For the past four weeks, David has resumed teaching, with both in person and virtual lessons. Angela Nelson also teaches percussion, in her case at Temple’s Boyer College of Music. She, too, recently resumed teaching.
And now she’s also eagerly anticipating the new Philadelphia Orchestra season. No matter how it’s changed, this still means performing with her colleagues, as she’s done for over 20 years.
The season is titled “Our World Now.”
It will feature works like “Seven O’Clock Shout” that especially respond to this moment in time, as well as pieces from the classical music repertoire by well known composers.
Presented weekly, the concerts will be filmed without audience on what the Orchestra calls its Digital Stage, first at the Mann Center stage through October and then in Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center. . It all begins with the opening night concert. For Nelson and her colleagues, it’s a longawaited reunion.
“I’m looking forward to hearing the sound of the full orchestra. I’ve missed it so much!” she said. “This was the longest we’ve gone without having a live performance.
“And even though we won’t be performing for a live audience, we’ll have the feeling of performing together. I’m grateful that we can continue to offer our music this way until we can return to the stage with a full audience.”