Bob Foster Musical Director/Keyboard
My initial thought was, “Good, you know, for the good of everyone.” And then I thought, “Oh, we’re done for a while.”
The funny thing was that I had a big birthday party, my 60th, on the last Sunday before the world went crazy, so for the first week of COVID I was thinking, “Oh no, I hope I haven’t started a cluster.”
My work is not all of my life, although that’s sort of what I thought it was before now. And to be honest, I’m probably more relaxed than I was.
Music direction has a lot of responsibility. I don’t just go in and do my own job, but I’m often giving notes, making sure the music is where it needs to be every night.
But I’m going to be pretty rusty on that old accordion when we get back, maybe I should go grab it so I can practise … I golf, I cook, I see my kids and I’m gardening, actually. This is my pride and joy, we’ve got squash, tomatoes, okra, broccoli, cabbage and carrots. Some of them are going well, some are not. But not bad at all. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but I just never really got around to it.
When you’re playing in an orchestra, it builds a community, musically and personally.
Something happens when you play music with someone: you feed off each other. You give and get back. There’s definitely something from the brain and from the soul we’re missing.
The band is pretty much always six feet apart from each other in this particular show. But some other orchestra pits, especially orchestras with a lot of brass instruments, it’ll be tough to figure that out … I’ve worked in some orchestra pits where one person has to go in before the next person because once they’re in they can’t get out, where the drummer has to crawl into his or her spot first. I think it’s possible to do, but it’s going to involve getting things in between people, like Plexiglas.
With technology you can do so much with isolation, in a studio you isolate all the instruments, anyway. For theatre, a lot of what you hear is coming through speakers, but the acoustic stuff, like a real orchestra, that’s a different matter.