The New York Times - USA - Arts & Leisure (2020-07-26)

12 AR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JULY 26, 2020

Pop

Both musicians and fans were blindsided by

the shutdown of concerts, and musicians

have been forced into an awkward public

learning curve. Finding themselves sud-

denly all alone, separated even from band-

mates, many discovered they had traded

sound-checked P.A. systems and flattering

stage lights for tinny laptop microphones

and the cramped rectangular screens of

smartphone cameras.

Palm-size rectangles are familiar spaces

for pop musicians promoting themselves

through Instagram. But those appearances

are usually casual, talky and short; they

briefly present the artist as something like a

regular person, trying to be relatable. If

smartphones and laptop screens are still

performance spaces, they are reductive

ones. Everyone looks taller onstage; every-

one looks smaller on a screen.

There was some charm, at first, in watch-

ing songs played from homey, unvarnished

settings, including the places where the

tunes had actually been written — so that’s

the guitar on that song! Look at that rare

synth! If listeners were lucky, the single-

camera shot also showed a high-quality mi-

crophone. Far too many livestreams are

still delivered through painfully lo-fi setups.

Home-alone livestreams have favored

self-contained solo acts who don’t depend

on theatricality or technological enhance-

ment: the jazz musician at the piano, the

country songwriter with an acoustic guitar,

the Broadway troupers who paid tribute to

Stephen Sondheim on his 90th birthday (of-

ten singing his stunningly complex songs to

equally complex prerecorded accompani-

ment). Electronic dance music D.J.s have

offered much better sound — they play re-

cordings — but they tend to look wonky and

diminished without club lighting and happy

dancers to pump up their beat.

For livestreamed concerts, mass popu-

larity has provided no advantage. Perform-

ers with small-scale careers, who are used

to playing coffeehouses or indie clubs, have

had to make fewer adjustments than musi-

cians who had moved up to bigger venues

and fancier productions. Quieter perform-

ers have adjusted much more gracefully

than histrionic ones.

Yet they all felt the absence of an in-per-

son audience. The lack of applause has rat-

tled musicians’ timing, completely disrupt-

ing what had been an instinctive feedback

loop. Many performers have responded by

getting downright chatty during their

streams, between and even during songs.

Therapists probably understand that reac-

tion to silence.

Other musicians are reading and re-

sponding to the busy scroll of online com-

ments; sometimes you can see their eyes

darting to their screens as they sing. Per-

haps musicians will develop new reflexes to

handle chat-window feedback as a substi-

tute for applause, while lucky fans may find

their favorites to be more immediately ac-

cessible. For now, when I watch an on-

screen performance alongside the scroll,

the chat reaction is quieter than being stuck

near a talkative audience member. But it’s

nearly as distracting.

If low-tech, livestreamed performance

has made anything clear, it’s this: Intimacy

is overrated. I hardly need to see any musi-

cian that closely. Yes, virtuosos can accom-

plish feats of physical dexterity and vocal

purity in real time; occasionally, a solo

close-up can be revelatory. Sometimes all

anyone needs to hear is a guitar and an

emotive voice. But as a fan, I don’t always

want to stay in the mundane work space

where a song originated. I also want to let

that song move me in all the other ways that

music can.

After all, art isn’t just the documentation

of a physical feat. Artists also construct

their own unreal worlds: strange, gorgeous,

eccentric, sometimes overwhelming illu-

sions. Musicians in the era of recording, am-

plification and synthesis concoct phan-

tasms in the studio and figure out how to

simulate them onstage, making music that

feels larger than life. Meanwhile, too many

livestreams are strictly earthbound.

Livestreaming only reminds us that artists

don’t have to be regular people.

For me, in the early weeks of the quaran-

tine, all those livestreams of lone perform-

ers at home added up to claustrophobia in-

stead of intimacy. The act of public perform-

ance, which once conveyed sharing and

emotional communion, projected isolation

and limitation instead. It’s no wonder so

many livestreams have been benefit shows

with long lists of performers playing a song

or two each — not only because countless

people and causes need help during this

economic collapse, but because homebound

musicians realize they can’t hold a viewer’s

attention the way they could on a stage.

Luckily for listeners, musicians online

have been stretching — and, frankly, cheat-

ing on — both the definition of a live per-

formance and social-distancing strictures.

Some have learned to treat the screen as a

stage allowing some artifice, even in real

time. It might be a plant-crammed home

setup, or a playfully changing video back-

drop, or a digital light show. At least it’s

more than a feed from a grainy smartphone

camera on a tripod.

As musicians settled into livestreaming,

physically separated bands started reunit-

ing, virtually and then in person. Digital re-

unions are usually cheats. Latency — the

delay between a live action and when it’s re-

ceived — barely affects an office meeting,

but it can be deadly to the subtle, split-sec-

ond interactions of musicians working to-

gether. So-called livestreams of physically

separated bands are likely to be feats of

editing: multiple tracks laid down as they

are in a recording studio.

The trickery may be obvious, as when

Kevin Parker presents himself multitrack-

ing instruments to become Tame Impala, or

Keith Urban suddenly multiplies himself in

a supposedly livestreamed performance.

Musicians may be bobbing their heads to

the same beat in the now-familiar video

grids, but that simulated Zoom meeting

isn’t actually happening; it’s a quiet tribute

to musicianship that those patiently assem-

bled, multitracked grids still find a groove.

The grids take the “live” out of livestream-

ing — face it, they’re music videos — but at

least there’s an image of cooperative effort:

one thing we used to take for granted at con-

certs.

Quarantine has also brought new for-

mats: the disc jockey D-Nice’s online dance

parties with chat scrolls full of A-list names;

the battle series Verzuz, concocted by the

producers Timbaland and Swizz Beatz, that

doubles as mutual-appreciation sessions.

Most have been streamed from isolation,

but on June 19 — Juneteenth — Alicia Keys

and John Legend shared a studio, playing

back to back at pink and black pianos. Social

distancing did not prevail; they hugged at

the end.

As stay-at-home guidelines have reced-

ed, musicians have been gathering in per-

son at nearly empty clubs, at recording stu-

dios and in outdoor spaces. When I watch, I

can’t help calculating how far apart the

players are standing, who’s masked and

who’s not, the number of cameras and

whether someone is carrying them, who set

up the equipment and who will be loading it

out. These venues, built for music, are

mostly empty, and presumably the few

workers on site take precautions. But there

is still no vaccine, and every close personal

encounter is a risk — particularly indoors,

particularly where breath is expended on

singing and playing instruments.

Hallowed music spaces like Ryman Audi-

torium in Nashville, Red Rocks Amphithe-

ater near Denver and Antone’s in Austin,

Texas, have opened their doors for

streamed benefit performances. In Boston,

Fenway Park opened the stadium to Drop-

kick Murphys — plenty of open space.

Jazz clubs — where on-the-spot musical

interaction is everything — have been de-

vising online survival strategies. The Vil-

lage Vanguard, the venerable Greenwich

Village basement club, has started weekly

livestreams of top-tier small groups that ob-

serve masking and social-distancing guide-

lines, with studio-quality miking and de-

tailed camera work that illuminates the mu-

sic. So have some concert halls, like the

Grand Ole Opry, with Saturday-night shows

on its ample stage.

The musicians are clearly happy to be

making music in the same room together,

even without an audience — enjoying, as

the pianist Vijay Iyer said before a spectac-

ular Village Vanguard set, “the fact that

we’re all in the room and the same air mole-

cules are vibrating.” Perhaps it’s not that

different from playing a rehearsal or a radio

appearance — except that the players have

been separated for so long, and their pleas-

ure in reuniting comes through. Solo inti-

macy may be overrated, but group proxim-

ity is not. Music-making simply isn’t the

same without it.

The internet may yet remake what dec-

ades, even centuries of concert traditions

have built up. Until there’s a vaccine, maybe

we can grow content with distant perform-

ers on flat screens, playing for us along with

the rest of a virtual audience. For now, it’s

still a work in progress.

LIVESTREAMING IN 2020

Livestreamed Intimacy Is Overrated

By JON PARELES

So many good intentions, so little joy. ¶ That’s the state of live music as it adjusts to the Covid-

pandemic. Social distancing tears apart the closeness that performers and listeners had always

taken for granted at concerts: closeness onstage, in the crowd and in the shared moment. These

early months have proved that musicians are eager to perform and that listeners still want the

singular bond with music that a concert provides. Instead, all we have is the indifferent internet.

OUT OF OFFICE

So much is lost

when audiences

can’t be physically

close to musicians

and chat-window

feedback replaces

cheers and

applause.

Last month, Alicia Keys, left, and John Legend

shared a studio for a Juneteenth performance

on the battle series Verzuz.

Some livestreamed concerts emulate the

one-time-only experience of live shows —

they’re webcast just once in real time, then

disappear from the web. Others recognize

that anything that’s digitized can be re-

corded and replayed. Here, alphabetically,

are 10 of the best virtual concerts that have

stayed online, picked by Jon Pareles.

AFRO-LATIN JAZZ ORCHESTRA

VIRTUAL BIRDLAND

Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra,

a big band dedicated to the fusion in its

name, has turned its weekly Sunday-night

slot at Birdland into virtual sets that hold

supercharged mambos alongside far-reach-

ing jazz excursions. The June 14 edition

features Rudresh Mahanthappa with break-

neck alto saxophone solos in “The Afro-

Cuban Jazz Suite” composed by Arturo’s

father, Chico O’Farrill.

AVENTURA

BUD LIGHT SELTZER SESSIONS

The corporate sponsorship is overbearing,

but it paid for a close-up, “MTV Unplugged”-

style studio session for Aventura, the New

York City band that turned Dominican

bachata into best-selling pop.

ERYKAH BADU

QUARANTINE: APOCALYPSE 3

Erykah Badu started off charging just $

admission to her increasingly ambitious

series of livestreamed shows; this one has

lingered online. “Apocalypse 3” was a surre-

al soundstage production — costumes,

lights, musicians in separate plastic bubbles

— that expanded on her 2015 mixtape, “But

You Caint Use My Phone,” vamping on

technology, communication and connection.

JASON ISBELL AND AMANDA SHIRES

LIVE AT BROOKLYN BOWL NASHVILLE

Jason Isbell celebrated the release date of

his new album, “Reunions,” by performing

its songs in a livestream from the near-

empty Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville, joined by

his wife, Amanda Shires, on fiddle and

harmony vocals. The songs are moody

character studies with philosophical under-

currents; the banter in between was loose

and free-associative.

GUNNA

WUNNA LIVE IN L.A.

Gunna staged “Wunna Live in LA” on the

terrace of a big white Los Angeles mansion,

with a live band — some masked — punch-

ing up his recorded tracks. His career cata-

lyst, Young Thug, makes a guest appear-

ance. The songs boast of material and sexu-

al triumphs, but they’re delivered as minor-

mode incantations, turning almost hypnotic.

NORAH JONES

MINI CONCERT (LIVE FROM HOME 6-18-

2020)

Norah Jones has been doing bare-bones

livestreams a few times a week during the

pandemic: just her and her upright piano

(or occasionally a guitar), playing to a cam-

era that she occasionally glances at. The

songs in this 21-minute set — hers and one

by Cut Worms — contemplate love, tran-

scendence and loss with troubled grace.

JORMA KAUKONEN

QUARANTINE CONCERT NO. 5

Jorma Kaukonen — a guitarist and singer in

Hot Tuna and, in the 1960s, in Jefferson

Airplane — has his own 200-seat theater,

from which concerts had been livestreamed

long before the lockdown. Since the pan-

demic hit, Kaukonen has been playing

mostly solo weekly concerts from its cozy

stage, working through a lifelong repertoire

that spans ragtime and psychedelia and

garrulously answering fan questions deliv-

ered by his wife, Vanessa.

NDUDUZO MAKHATHINI

MODES OF COMMUNICATION: #STAYHOME-

SESSIONS WITH NDUDUZO MAKHATHINI

The South African pianist Nduduzo

Makhathini merges the modal propulsion of

McCoy Tyner with kindly, straightforward

melodies that lead into quasi-mystical medi-

tations and explosive sprints. His home-

made livestream — he plays upright piano

and is joined by his wife, the singer

Omagugu Makhathini — is a mini-manifesto

of hope, determination and gratitude.

DANIELA MERCURY

LIVE DA RAINHA

Daniela Mercury, a Brazilian superstar who

performed for hundreds of thousands on

New Year’s Eve 2010 in Rio de Janeiro,

struts and sambas as if she’s on a much

larger stage, with her masked band behind

her on what looks like a patio and her chil-

dren showing up as Carnival revelers.

POST MALONE

NIRVANA TRIBUTE

Post Malone’s tribute to Nirvana — a benefit

for the World Health Organization that was

apparently shot in a rec room with a well-

stocked bar — was heartfelt and loud, not to

mention one of the few real-time

livestreams that could handle the sonic

demands of electric guitars. Travis Barker

commanded the drums, and Post Malone,

true to Nirvana aesthetics, wore a dress.

These Concerts

Don’t Just Vanish

Some virtual shows

are not one time only.