CLASSICAL COMPOSERS IN PANDEMIC TIMES
“Looking back on the first few months of the pandemic, Andrew Balfour recalls being in “an absolute state of shock.” The composer and artistic director of Winnipeg-based chamber choir Dead of Winter recalls, “After I’d realized the seriousness of [COVID-19] globally, I was even starting to think, ‘I had a good run. I was lucky enough to do what I wanted for this long. Maybe I’ll have to get another job.’”
Balfour, like other composers in the field of contemporary classical music, was for a time completely derailed by the constant postponement and cancellation of live performances. Most often, composing is a matter of devising a score and then handing it off. So while other music creators were able to live-stream from home, or make recordings, or collaborate remotely with other songwriters or bandmates, or continue to produce soundtrack work, composers were left working solo, on music no one would be able to hear – including themselves – for an indefinite period of time.
In theory, it would be ideal to work with few distractions and no engagements. In practice, this was rarely the case. For Corie Rose Soumah, a SOCAN Foundation Award-winning young composer from Montréal, who’s studying for a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree at Columbia University in New York, the pandemic’s psychological toll meant “the question of productivity was an irritation: ‘I can’t see my family, I can’t see my friends, I’m staying in this apartment with a cat – and then I have to compose?…”
Story by Mike Doherty
