San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
‘To not be able to perform ... is unthinkable’
The numbers used to add up nicely for Healy Henderson. They don’t anymore. Not counting her teaching duties as an adjunct music professor at Southwestern College, the Bonsallbased Healy has worked constantly for nearly 20 years as a first-call freelance violinist throughout San Diego and beyond, including at Disney Hall in Los Angeles. Orchestral and musical theater performances are her forte.
“Pre-pandemic, I’d do 10 to 12 weeks a year playing in productions at the Old Globe and 10 to 12 weeks at La Jolla Playhouse,” said Henderson, whose husband is a horse trainer. “I also played with the San Diego Symphony, San Diego Opera and Broadway San Diego’s touring productions at the Civic Theatre. I worked an average of between 34 and 45 weeks a year with those organizations.
“On March 11, we were in previews for ‘Fly’ at La Jolla Playhouse. We got an email the next day to not come back to work because the production was canceled. I have not worked since then in San Diego. I went from what would have been a really good year of $60,000 in freelance work to nothing.”
Like many other musicians, Henderson initially hoped things would resume this summer or in the fall at the latest. She has resigned herself to waiting until well into next year and cites New York as a barometer for live performances nationwide.
“Broadway has canceled all of its productions through the end of June, and so has the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera,” Henderson said.
“I think the rest of the country will have to follow suit, mainly because the actors and production crews have to start four to five months ahead of when the musicians come in. So, my hope is we might get to do one of these 2020 San Diego productions that has been canceled or postponed in the fall of 2021.”
An Orange County native who grew up in Dana Point, Henderson earned her bachelor’s degree in music at Depaul University in Chicago. She studied at the Moscow Conservatory in Russia before earning her master’s at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore.
In 2000, she signed a one-year contract with the San Diego Symphony and moved here in 2002. While no longer a full-time member, Henderson is a frequent substitute violinist in the orchestra. Or, rather, she was. Her only two gigs this summer were with an all-masked string quartet at a pair of outdoor weddings in Orange County, which less stringently enforces California’s prohibition of live performances during the pandemic.
“I have had friends, who are not in the music business, say to me, ‘You must be so grateful to have all this time off,’ ” she said. “I lost it with one friend and told them: ‘This is not a vacation. This is who we are. To not be able to perform for six months, or a year, is unthinkable.’
“Even my family, who has known me for the last 43 years, doesn’t understand that this is not what musicians would choose. We’re not getting ‘time off.’ We’ve had our performing careers stripped from us. We’re usually playing eight shows a week.”
Henderson has been a faculty member for the past nine years at Southwestern College, where she teaches music history and violin and viola performance classes. Because of the pandemic, she is now teaching only her music history class — and only virtually. In order to do that, she had to upgrade her home computer system.
“We’ll be staying online until at least through spring semester,” Henderson said. “I lost half my classes because the enrollment now doesn’t warrant the number I had been teaching. I am making about an eighth of what I used to, although I have been able to keep teaching my private students, which I feel very fortunate about. I’m taking new distance education faculty training, which I have to do in order to teach online at Southwestern. And I’m looking at other positions for online teaching, outreach, adult education and some various extension courses.
“Now that everything has gone online, it makes it much more accessible for me to look at working at places out of state, from Bonsall. I’ve never done that before. I’m also looking at earning my doctorate in music online from Columbia or Boston College, which both offer programs for working musicians.”
With more time on her hands, Henderson has been learning improvisation, bluegrass fiddling and improvisation. She is also devoting more time to playing her viola.
“I just hope audiences don’t get too familiar and comfortable with hearing us online and not live,” she said. “It would be such a shame if that happened. Because hearing the music live, instantly, at concerts and theater productions is the essence of what we do. It’s why we’ve studied for all these years. I hope society doesn’t shift so much that we can’t come back as strong and creative as we were, pre-pandemic.”
“This is not what musicians would choose. We’re not getting ‘time off.’ We’ve had our performing careers stripped from us.” Healy Henderson