San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The year of coulda, woulda and shoulda
The way to make God laugh, according to the old proverb, is to tell her your plans.
The San Francisco Symphony had a lot of plans in place for 2020 that would have made it pretty much the headline year in the organization’s centuryplus history, and we were all going to come along for the ride. And then, this happened. Obviously, the COVID19 pandemic would have been a revolting development no matter when it showed up. But there have been some iffy years on the Bay Area’s classical music front ( not to name names, although I’m looking at you, 2013) when the loss of nine months’ worth of artistic activity might have elicited a collective shrug.
But 2020? This one had promise. San Francisco classical music lovers had been looking forward to this year for a long time. And to have it all snatched away — well, how 2020 is that?
This was the year when the Symphony was poised to say goodbye to Michael Tilson Thomas — arguably the most important music director the orchestra has ever had — after a glorious, eclectic, tumultuous 25year tenure. Then it was going to welcome EsaPekka Salonen, perhaps the only conductor on the international scene with the potential to rival and extend that legacy of excellence and innovation.
The comings and goings still happened, of course. Thomas bowed out with an online program of virtual fanfare, the musical equivalent of a celebratory Zoom happy hour. Salonen is now officially the orchestra’s music director, a transition marked only by November’s online premiere of Nico Muhly’s delightful commission, “Throughline.”
But any reckoning of the year in music is simply a melancholy litany of what would have been, recited in what grammarians call the imperfect subjunctive regretful mood. ( OK, they don’t, but they ought to.)
The final months of Thomas’ tenure were supposed to have
theaters nationwide, including to a crowd at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton.
The lineup for drivein performances grew more diverse as the year went on, with acts such as the funkfusion bass player Thundercat, dance music heavyweights Major Lazer and jazzpop orchestra Pink Martini performing at the Bayshore DriveIn on the waterfront along the San Francisco International Airport.
Thinking outside the club
With indoor music events banned, David Quinby and Les James started staging popup shows outside their San Francisco venues, Amado’s in the Mission and the Riptide in the Outer Sunset, in May.
The miniconcerts brought some much needed relief to residents who had been deprived of live music since the statewide shelterinplace order went into effect in March.
Other venues got in on the act too, including the Chapel, which started staging outdoor, socially distanced concerts in August; and the Midway, in the city’s Dogpatch neighborhood, which benefited from its remote location and vast 40,000squarefoot space.
Festivals go virtual
Forced to cancel inperson events, the Bay Area’s biggest festivals went online.
Organizers of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival presented a masterfully filmed threehour stream in Oct. 3, called “Let the Music Play On.” Produced with COVID19 protocols in mind, the online festival was made up of prerecorded sets by Hardly Strictly veterans Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Steve Earle, Patty Griffin and Boz Scaggs, performing at venues across the country designed to evoke memories of the familiar stages in the park.
Another Planet did the same with Inside Lands, a virtual event made up of new live performances and archival sets from Outside Lands, its inperson outdoor festival in Golden Gate Park.
But the new Zoom world was not only for the festivals.
Several Bay Area artists, from Matt Nathanson to Michael Franti, found new ways to connect with their audiences from quarantine with Instagram live, fan club chats and payperview concerts.
Venues issue a red alert
Most live music venues in the United States were forced to close at the onset of the coronavirus outbreak in March, putting not only musicians out of work, but also those who work behind the scenes such as sound and light crews, stage techs, tour bus drivers and more.
A study by the National Independent Venue Association, which formed in April, reported that 90% of the country’s clubs will be forced to permanently shut down without aid.
As politicians stalled, more than 600 major recording artists — including Lady Gaga, Neil Young, Billie Eilish, Robert Plant and Dave Grohl — signed a letter to Congress on behalf of NIVA, asking for financial relief for the country’s independent concert venues.
Bob Weir joined the call to draw attention to two active bipartisan proposals, the Restart Act and the Save Our Stages Act, asking the government to establish a business recovery fund for concert venues, grant tax relief and extend unemployment insurance to contract workers and artists who do not typically qualify for such benefits.
“Nobody is asking for a handout here,” said Weir, who canceled his tour with Wolf Bros earlier this year. “It’s a simple matter of do we want a culturerich society, or is that not important to us?”