https://www.middleclassartist.com/post/opinion-the-road-ahead-what-will-the-us-arts-economy-look-like-in-a-post-covid-world
thumbnail sketch, expect to go at least 18 months without any paying gigs; expect the traditional fall-back industries musicians work in for side gigs or more stable primary income to evaporate, specifically food service, hospitality industries and teaching spots.
Of some note is the following proposal, the bold in the original:
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The tragic irony of this crisis is that, in the post-COVID era, the person most likely to have a performance career will be the one that can last the longest without performing. If the drought does indeed last 18 months or longer, only the most privileged singers, those with deep reserves of cash or those who already have a dual career or those from advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, will have a chance at a post-COVID performing career.
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Conversely, all the amateurs who keep on being amateurs may not be effected in many observable ways precisely because they aren't in it for paychecks that cover living expenses. Call it a carry-over from being that rarity in the current West of actually liking a moderate chunk of the music of Paul Hindemith but I am reminded lately that it was Hindemith (and others, like Sousa) who made a case that the real lifeblood of musical life in a culture came down to the amateurs more than the professionals. Thinkpieces about the future of the arts in light of the virus are generally thinkpieces about the future of professional arts and not the future of the amateur scenes.
Thus ... unsurprisingly ... The New Yorker had a piece on the future of performing artists primarily about the professionals, or the would-be professionals or the by-now-former professionals:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/performing-artists-and-the-financial-fallout-of-the-coronavirus
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New York’s performing-arts scene has taken hits before—after 9/11, during the recession that began in 2007, after Hurricane Sandy—but its elimination for an indefinite period of time is unprecedented. On March 11th and 12th, Governor Andrew Cuomo, of New York, forbade all gatherings of more than five hundred people, and Broadway and Off Broadway theatres were shut down. The cancellation of theatrical runs, musical tours, comedy shows, club nights, film screenings, book launches, and political fund-raisers quickly followed. The night of Monday, March 16th, when bars and restaurants were officially closed, the calendar had been wiped clean. I have seen small clusters of friends lose their jobs in the past, but last week, when dozens of friends and acquaintances saw their livelihoods evaporate in a matter of twenty-four hours, was different. Requests appeared online: if you could afford to eat the cost of your ticket, consider it a donation to the theatre. If you couldn’t go see the musician live, buy her album on Bandcamp. Night clubs started Venmo accounts for their bartenders and bouncers. Independent bookstores, where readings had been cancelled, offered discounted shipping to people who bought new releases. The world seemed to bifurcate into people who still had jobs (for now) and those who didn’t, with the former anxiously looking for ways to cover for the latter, who were now scrambling for new sources of income, any income. On my social-media feeds, one musician I know offered virtual cello lessons; another offered virtual reiki consultations. People who produce sound events advertised their services mastering music. People put their musical equipment up for sale. As in most cities, the arts scene in New York is inextricably linked to the service and event-production industries, and the loss of creative livelihoods has been compounded by the closures of bars, restaurants, and coffee shops, and the cancellations of weddings, conferences, and other large events. Day jobs and night jobs disappeared at the same time.
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I do keep track of how my favorite professional musicians and composers are doing. I'm excited about the recordings of works by Nikita Koshkin and Atanas Ourkouzounov that came out in December 2019 on Naxos. Hilary Hahn, fortuitously, chose to take a sabbatical year away from concert life and musical life to spend time with her family and has managed to not have any tours going during a period in which touring life has been gutted. But I am also, per the general theme of this post, considering how there is a lot of cultural life that will continue that continues in ways that are not exactly monetized, or not monetized in ways that the institutional arts press covers.
I'm reminded of Matanya Ophee's observation that most of the famous guitarist-composers of the classical guitar canon were professional soldiers, whether out in combat or handling administrative duties in some sinecure capacity. If in the nineteenth century the pianist was stereotypically at concert in salons and large halls the guitarist could have a more literally peripatetic existence going where ever the soldier needed to go. Not all of them, obviously. Matiegka, for instance, worked in law and education. If there's something I realize in hindsight that never came with a music education program it was conceding the reality of how few of the composers and musicians who made music history in the West didn't actually have day jobs in music or, if they had day jobs that involved music it was nevertheless a subset of their other day-to-day professional or vocational activities.
Given the general nosedive in local and regional arts reporting in the last twenty to thirty years it can be easy to not realize how much activity there is in a cultural scene. For that matter, as I managed to chronicle in extravagant detail, there was a lot going on connected to the former Mars Hill Church that wasn't covered so much by the mainstream or even independent press in connection to controversies and staff turnover that hinted at unrest regarding the leadership tendencies of the Mars Hill top tier. In a vaguely similar way, there can be a lot going on in a local arts scene that, thanks to reductions in local arts coverage, a person can only know about by staying somehow involved in the local arts scene.
Of course ... that's been ravaged by the recent pandemic and lockdown situations. Recent word is Gov. Inslee is extended the stay home/stay healthy policies through to at least May 4.
You can't even really have much of an amateur music scene "in real life" under those kinds of circumstances, can you? Online many things may have to stay.
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