Will Chicago have music and arts this summer? Yes, if we think small, local, and start now, writes the Tribune’s Chris Jones.
It will if we think small and local, and start now
On Jan. 16 more than 20,000 people attended a concert in a sports stadium.
Social distancing was not required. Nobody was required to wear a mask. Concertgoers brushed up against each other, just as they had before the pandemic. A guitarist even headed out into the audience to have some up-close fun with the crowd.
Where was this remarkable event? Waitangi, New Zealand.
The outdoor show was part of a six-city summer tour of that nation’s most successful band, Six60. And it was yet another reminder of how well that particular nation has controlled the coronavirus. There are fewer than 100 active cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand, and fewer than 2,300 cases have been reported there throughout the entire global crisis.
Summer is now in New Zealand and the performing arts are back in business. The benefits of sound governmental policy and a determined, unified citizenry are being reaped.
But what of the other side of the world, where the pandemic rages and lockdowns and cancellations are the rules of the day? Are we going to have any kind of summer arts season in Chicago?
No one yet knows. But planning time is running short.
There is certainly a fevered and widespread desire for one.
“We are having productive discussions with our colleagues at Ravinia and have agreed we are all eager to have a CSO season there this summer within proper safety protocols for the audience and the orchestra,” said Jeff Alexander, the president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association.
But Illinois has reported more than 1 million COVID-19 cases since the crisis began and still is reporting around 5,000 new cases a day. Large public gatherings, even outdoors, remain banned by city and state authorities and no one outside government yet can be confident of when that will change. And while vaccinations in the state have begun, it remains unclear whether a sufficient percentage (likely 50% or more) of the Chicago-area population will be treated in time for officials to have enough certitude in a sufficient reduction in infection rates to allow major gatherings.
“Just a few weeks ago I was hopeful we would see a summer season of music,” said Jerry Mickelson, the CEO of Jam Productions, echoing what many commercial promoters had been
saying over the holiday season. “But at this point in time I have my doubts due to the slow rollout of the vaccine.”
A spokesperson for the city of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events said Commissioner Mark Kelly was “not yet available” to talk about summer permitting or plans.
The Tribune reported Wednesday that the outdoor Pitchfork Music Festival has applied for a permit to move its Union Park festival to September, thus occupying the typically temperate shoulder season between summer and fall and buying as many weeks as possible between now and the need for firm decision-making and investment.
Riot Fest has said that it also plans to snag September dates for its annual Douglass Park event.
The reasons for all this interest in September are obvious. Many in the industry believe that even the fall is an optimistic projection for a return to major events.
“Some in our business are predicting that we might not open until 2022,” Mickelson said, again citing the slow vaccine rollout.
September, when schools and colleges start to resume for the fall, hardly is the typical peak of outdoor events. And the potential lack of major concerts in July and August would not be good news for summer-only organizations such as Ravinia Festival, which then would be staring down two years of no live shows and no income at the box office. (Ravinia did not respond to a request for comment.)
There is a further issue: Large events and tours require months of planning. Pre-pandemic, plans would either have already been made or be coming together now. If artists don’t tour, or delay their
tour until the fall or the summer of 2022, presenters will find it impossible to build a schedule, and any decision to hire venue staff and restart operations will involve the risk of doing so with insufficient programming to cover fixed costs.
So what to do?
One option is for Chicago to see the summer of 2021 as an opportunity to embrace the spontaneous, the organic and the local.
Pre-pandemic, there was much criticism of the corporatization of summer festivals, of fresh-air gatherings obliterated by branding, overcrowding and selling. Especially in the music industry, arguments long have raged here over the diminishment of local artists and venues as festival headliners pulled all the focus and their traveling fans turned green grass into slick mud.
This year, there is a chance to do things differently.
With international tourism unlikely to have returned in any number by summer and domestic travel still likely favoring remote locations at the expense of major cities, Chicago’s cultural leaders have a rare, fair-weather chance to privilege the people in the neighborhoods and locally based artists who don’t require either a long lead time or massive financial risk.
Plans could be put in place now to cut regulatory licensing and bureaucracy so that cultural decisions can be made more quickly and shows can be greenlighted
with less notice, should regulations and conditions allow. Smaller outdoor venues with better social distancing could be set up. Local touring by Chicago theaters could replace the national shows that are unlikely to be coming here this summer, especially if financial assistance was forthcoming.
And street fairs, one of the great pleasures of city life, could be rethought for 2021, potentially improving them for all time.
In the absence of official blessings, neighborhoods created their own cultural gatherings in 2020, be they concerts on a stoop, dancing in the street or jokes told from the back of a flatbed truck. People will want to come out of their houses and officials will have the obligation to help them do so safely, as well as to provide the kind of soul-nourishing sustenance and healing that has a direct impact on public health beyond the virus.
The cultural summer of 2021 does not need to be like 2019 or any of the years before. It does not even need to be like the summers of the future. But it does need to exist.
That will require specific planning around the inability to plan. And it will mean all parties will need to learn the virtues of flexibility.
The ideal result? Fellowship. Renewal. Peace. Unity. Hope. Performance.