THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2020 AR 5“Once you make it on the stage of the Metro-
politan Opera, you are set,” the mezzo-so-
prano J’Nai Bridges said recently.
When Ms. Bridges, 33, debuted at the Met
in November in Philip Glass’s “Akhnaten,”
she had already sung canonical roles
around the world. But she found in Mr.
Glass’s Nefertiti an ideal vocal and theatri-
cal fit. With this unconventional role there
would be fewer preconceived notions, she
said, and “more space for people to receive
my performance honesty and openly.”
A writer for The New York Times Maga-
zine followed Ms. Bridges as she prepared
for the debut. Opening night went wonder-
fully. The reviews were excellent. The run,
which included an HD broadcast, sold out.
Ms. Bridges was ecstatic.
And then everything stopped.
In March, midway through a well-re-
ceived run as Dalila in the Washington Na-
tional Opera’s production of “Samson et
Dalila,” that company, along with arts insti-
tutions around the world, closed down in re-
sponse to the coronavirus pandemic. All of
Ms. Bridges’s spring and summer engage-
ments were canceled: “Carmen” at the
Dutch National Opera, Berg’s “Wozzeck” at
the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France.
When we first spoke in May, she was still
hanging on for a BBC Proms concert in Lon-
don in July. Simon Rattle was to conduct
Chineke, an orchestra founded in 2015 to
provide opportunities to young musicians
of color, in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,
with Ms. Bridges, Pretty Yende, Lawrence
Brownlee and Ryan Speedo Green as the
vocal soloists.
It was a performance that meant a great
deal to her — then it, too, was canceled. A
flood of fall cancellations followed, includ-
ing the Met, where she was to sing the title
role in “Carmen” in October, a return to the
stage where she’d been so acclaimed a year
before in “Akhnaten.”
“To go from maybe the highest point in
my career so far to literally nothing has
been tragic, to say the least,” she said. “Ini-
tially I was in disbelief and shock. Since
then I’ve been going through phases of
fighting back, despair and acceptance.”
For classical music, which for all its ritzy
connotations has always been economically
fragile, the impact of the pandemic has been
devastating — for large companies as well
as for freelance artists like Ms. Bridges.
It’s true: While opera fans may think of
Ms. Bridges as a diva, she is a freelancer
who lives gig to gig. The same goes even for
world-famous prima donnas like Anna Ne-
trebko. Neither the Met nor any other com-
pany offers either of them a salary, even
though both are, in the opera world, stars.
The same goes for artists who are stars in
the contemporary music world, like Conor
Hanick, a brilliant pianist who plays a wide
range of repertory superbly but is best
known for his commanding performances
of contemporary solo and chamber works.
Musicians like Mr. Hanick, 37, can seem to
occupy a kind of classical music under-
ground, often playing in smaller, alternative
spaces, chamber festivals, or offshoot
events presented by larger institutions. But
this world is a crucial hotbed of creativity,
and Mr. Hanick is a major figure in it.
When we first spoke, in May, he was feel-
ing bleak but was coming to some helpful
realizations while staying close to home in
his Brooklyn apartment with his wife and
10-month-old son. He spoke of his “decimat-
ed season,” with projects canceled and pre-
mieres canned.
“In a weird and depressing way, this ca-
tastrophe has been one of the mighty lev-
elers of my career,” he said. “I don’t have
any work in the next few months, but I don’t
think Yo-Yo Ma has any either, or someone
like my friend Julia Bullock.”
It was a source of comfort, he added, that
“we’re all experiencing similar feelings of
uncertainly.”
Luckily, his wife, Silvia Lin-Hanick, is a li-
brarian and associate professor at La-
Guardia Community College; her family
has been able to be on her insurance plan.
Some institutions have been able to fulfill
their commitments to performers like Mr.
Hanick. For going on eight summers, he has
been on the faculty of the Music Academy of
the West in Santa Barbara, Calif. This sum-
mer, he will be participating from home in
the school’s Remote-Learning Institute.
The work will be fulfilling, he said, and get-
ting paid is a relief. (The school will pay him
in full for the weeks he is working and in
part for the canceled period; the session istwo weeks shorter than usual this year.)
A concert he was scheduled to take part
in this summer at the Caramoor Festival in
Katonah, N.Y., alongside the four members
of the Sandbox Percussion ensemble will
proceed, though without a live audience, as
part of a series of livestreamed programs
from Caramoor. Mr. Hanick has been learn-
ing the challenging solo part for Christo-
pher Cerrone’s new concerto for solo pre-
pared piano and percussion quartet.
Though grateful to Caramoor for keeping
the project alive, Mr. Hanick has been strug-
gling with the emotions of “infiltrating
other people’s bubbles,” as he put it.
He has been working on the score
through online conferences with Mr. Cer-
rone. Both he and the members of Sandbox
Percussion in Brooklyn will all be tested for
the virus before they begin rehearsals in
mid-July. Mr. Hanick plans to rent a car to
travel to the ensemble’s studio in Sunset
Park rather than risking the subway. They
will travel in a group to Caramoor for theAug. 6 program.
But other works that were on his docket
have remained unpracticed while the music
world prepares to spend much of the next
year in hibernation. “Any minute spent at
the piano is obviously a minute spent to-
ward something larger,” he said. Still, he
added, “to spend, say, 25 hours learning and
rehearsing a new piece only to have it can-
celed is literally an investment that doesn’t
pay off, in a purely economic sense.”
Unlike him, Ms. Bridges has no regular
teaching position to fall back on. Though
she loves living in New York, everyone is
isolating. So she decided to leave her apart-
ment in Harlem and go to Houston to stay
with friends.
“I told myself that we don’t get awards for
deciding to do this alone,” she said. So she
decided to listen to herself and “not really
do anything.”
She has been taking time to get a better
handle on languages, crucial for an opera
singer, and to immerse herself again in
gospel and jazz, music she grew up with. In
May she had a gratifying experience doing
an online discussion with students at North-
western University. “It gave me much-
needed joy,” she said.
Then came the killing of George Floyd in
Minneapolis, and the wave of protests that
followed. Los Angeles Opera invited Ms.
Bridges to present a livestreamed recital.
She told the company that she was not in the
right emotional place for that. Instead, she
proposed a panel discussion with her and
fellow singers of color to discuss racial is-
sues in opera and society.
“These are conversations that black art-
ists have every day with each other,” she
said. “I’m tired of having them. But if we are
having them, we might as well be on a plat-
form.”
Available on the company’s website, the
panel discussion also included Mr. Brown-
lee, Ms. Bullock, the soprano Karen Slack,
the tenor Russell Thomas and the bass Mor-
ris Robinson. The participants brought up
painful personal experiences in life and at
work. Mr. Robinson noted that after 20
years in opera, he had yet to be hired by a
black general manager or greeted by a
black board chairman, and had never been
directed or conducted by a black artist.
In the most poignant exchange, all six
singers spoke of how tiring it is to be con-
stantly expected to teach their white col-
leagues about racism. Shouldn’t the issues
involved, basic questions of right and
wrong, be obvious to all?
“I’ve been asked how it is being a black
opera singer,” Ms. Bridges told me after the
panel discussion. “That’s the craziest ques-
tion. I’m an artist. I’m a singer. I go out on-
stage. I don’t have to save the world.”
All she has to do, as performances remain
on pause, is hold on. Ms. Bridges, Mr. Han-
ick and musicians in all stages of their ca-
reers and levels of fame are hoping for some
semblance of normalcy in 2021. Ms. Bridges
sounded sure of one thing.
“Artists will come back with more inspi-
ration, and people will change,” she said.
The experience of live music will deepen,
she insisted: “How can it not?”On the Rise Until Everything Stopped
The singer J’Nai Bridges and
the pianist Conor Hanick are
stars yet still freelance workers.
By ANTHONY TOMMASINIRAHIM FORTUNE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESHEATHER STEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESHIROYUKI ITO/GETTY IMAGESSARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMESThe mezzo-soprano
J’Nai Bridges, top, and
the pianist Conor
Hanick, left, are among
the many classical
artists who have been
largely sidelined by the
coronavirus outbreak. Mr.
Hanick has played at a
variety of performance
spaces, including with
the Juilliard Orchestra in
2016, above. Last fall,
Ms. Bridges, below with
Anthony Roth Costanzo,
made her debut at the
Metropolitan Opera in
Philip Glass’s “Akhnaten.”Many artists, even
those who are widely
acclaimed, live gig to gig.
Classical