Although quarantine measures remain in place, people can still tune in to Isabel music shows from the comfort of their homes.
In the absence of ticket revenue, Isabel Bader Centre Director Tricia Baldwin chose to host music performances online to support the livelihoods of local artists.
“The arts and cultural [sector] in Canada is a 54-billion-dollar industry,” she said in an interview with The Journal. “It’s a major employer, but the gig economy is muchmore vulnerable.”
With this in mind, the Bader Centre introduced the Ballytobin Online Summer Music Festival, accessible through the Centre’s website. The Ballytobin Foundation offers philanthropic support to the Arts and Culture sector in Kingston.
“Artists walk away with a video that’s theirs with high fidelity sound,” Baldwin said.
Artists are also given wide-spread exposure, as the livestreams are broadcast through the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, Rhode Island Chamber Music Concerts, and War Memorial of Gross Point, Michigan, in addition to the Bader Centre’s local audience.
The festival takes place at the Isabel’s Digital Concert Hall, but is streamed to the Centre’s Facebook and YouTube pages as well. The Digital Concert Hall has live countdowns before every scheduledperformance’s livestream.
There are 16 total livestreams, taking place from May-August of 2020. Performance genres range from Indigenous to classical and hip hop.
Taking notes from the Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall, the Bader Centre’s technical team, led by Aaron Holmberg, worked on creating a dynamic viewing experience.
The Bader Centre’s Online Festival was specially innovated to maintain the live experience, but Baldwin plans to improve the digital viewing experience moving forward.
“People’s attention spans are very short visually,” she said. “So, we had to make sure different camera angles are happening.”
She added their technical team plans on experimenting with 360° cameras.
The Gryphon Trio, a classical music ensemble, was the first to perform live at the Bader Centre on May 16. Their livestream, available on Facebook, is an hour and forty minutes, and in it they play classical pieces including Beethoven’s Archduke Trioand Dvořák’s “Dumky” Piano Trio in E minor.
Tags
Covid-19, Isabel Bader Centre, Live Music
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.