The Global Pandemic has created a ubiquitous artistic presence that was only somewhat employed in prior years: YouTube recordings of music. Like countless other musicians during the pandemic, I chose to create video musical presentations, solo performances and choral performances (edited from individuals performing from their homes), during the sudden absence and impossibility of performing live in front of an audience or congregation. I argued that YouTube “concerts” were a way to minister to the throngs of people desperately clinging to some form of normalcy and engagement with beauty. Thank heavens we live at a time in history when technology has allowed us to communicate this way. I feel enormous gratitude for the possibilities that technology has afforded me in my lifetime. Of course using recording technology, and posting to YouTube also became a way for me to keep my skillset sharp and even learn a new one to complement it (videography).
Without exception, every musician I spoke with said that streaming of live events and filming of virtual concerts is here to stay. We were suddenly able to show our musical endeavors to friends across the globe who would have never been able to hear us otherwise.
Now that the musical world is returning, full force, to a live performance schedule, we have the opportunity to examine this assumption. Is the capability of watching a concert, or a church/synagogue service, from home preferable to taking the time to drive through traffic, look for parking, wait in line to purchase a ticket, show your proof of vaccination record, sit in an assigned seat that may or may not be completely comfortable, and know that you can’t get up to use the bathroom until a socially acceptable time? Yes. In point of fact, it’s a quantum amount better to participate in a live performance than a streamed one. And it’s a quantum amount better to hear live music than an edited product on YouTube, Spotify, or the like.
Let’s look at Quantum Theory. I don’t pretend to grasp its sophistication nor its complexity, but many of the basic tenets of quantum theory have been self-understood by performing artists for at least several centuries – since humanity’s creation of an elevated position for someone able to share their gift of performing (which represented a giant leap forward in the evolution of our species). Specifically, performing artists have long been able to recognize when a given performance feels more connected with an audience, when that audience is “good” or not, when an intangible magic seems to take place, and when a performance feels like struggle or feels like joy. What’s the difference? After all, the musical notes are more or less the same from performance to performance. (In the theater world, the lines of the script stay the same, as well.) So how can consecutive performances of the same program material feel different?
In quantum theory, science tells us that the observer effects the observed. And in neuroscience, we learn that mirror neurons, the instinct to copy, exactly, what we see another person do, formulates one of our most primal capabilities, observable in infants as young as six hours old!
In the performance world, the collective affect of an audience/congregation directly influences the work of the performer (quantum theory) in completely invisible, nonverbal language that is only vaguely understood. Furthermore, what I, as a performer, feel and express through my craft and my body language, is absorbed and mirrored by the audience/congregation (mirror neurons); and what the collective audience is feeling is absorbed by me as the performer (mirror neurons, again). Audience members may think they are passive listeners to the “professional” performer, but in truth they are participating in an integral relationship with the performer, so profoundly, in fact, that they greatly effect the final product (the performance, itself). The performer and the audience are one; there is a complete symbiosis of everyone present in any concert/worship service/theater performance.
Why go to a live performance? What makes the “live” part so special? The answer is only partly alluded to above: there is an engagement of the total person that can only happen in live settings, because “engagement” assumes the possibility of change, or in spiritual language (which is far more accurate when describing matters of the heart), transformation. But there is another aspect which performers rarely, if ever, reveal to their audience: the potential for something to go awry (incorrectly called “making a mistake”) as one of the main determinates for finding joy in the act of performing. What? Really? Yes. It is the striving for my performance ideal that is one of my chief stimulations as a performer. Regardless of how much I practice, invariably something goes “South” at some point in a performance. It may be caused by a momentary lapse in concentration, or a momentary distraction from the audience, or a body ache that suddenly shows up, or any of a myriad of other possibilities. How I handle that moment, coming out of it and back into the FLOW, or ZONE, is the secret to being a successful performer that people gravitate toward. This only happens, and only can happen, in live performances.
It’s no secret that I love to record. I’m on more than 50 CDs, hundreds of YouTubes, and the like. I love every aspect of recording. The microphones are my friends; and the recording engineers are my equal colleagues. But it occurs to me, now, that recordings (including edited YouTube performances) share almost nothing in common with performances. It’s a brash statement, but I truly believe that. Performances are about engaging with an audience, and the audience engaging with me. Recordings are presentation of an ideal. Recordings present the concept of the piece of music, but they don’t present the music, itself. Is it possible to be profoundly moved by a recording? ABSOLUTELY! But thought of in this light, no one would confuse the concept of a piece (with its one-way engagement) with the music of a piece (with its two-way engagement). It’s the difference between a book and a story. Just like no one would confuse masturbation and sex. One is solo, the other is communal. Let’s not make the same mistake with recorded music and live performances.