COVID-19: One Jazz Vocalist's Experience
Author: Karen Oxorn
[email protected]
Date: October 7, 2020
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ottawa Jazz Happenings or of JazzWorks Canada.
2020 had been shaping up to be a particularly busy one for me in terms of live jazz. Not only was my own performance calendar filling up with many interesting gig opportunities, but also I had plans for increased travel to a number of old and new locations for concerts, jazz festivals, and club dates in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Europe, as well as destinations closer to home. I was also looking forward to more learning opportunities, including attending JazzWorks Jazz Camp for the second time, having had such an excellent experience in 2019.
I started the year off with some jazz cruises in the Caribbean, as I’d been doing since I went on my first one in 2017. I’d also begun hosting intimate jazz concerts in my new condo and was looking forward to continuing that new tradition. And finally, I had a variety of volunteer activities planned for 2020.
In December 2019 into January and February 2020, I began actively working on the planning and programming for the 10th Anniversary Edition of Merrickville’s Jazz Fest (MJF), having agreed to return as its Artistic Director for this one very special milestone year. This time around, I took on the additional duties of creating content for the MJF website and handling its Social Media. In the three years since I’d stepped down, there had been a few innovations, but the festival was still planned and programmed in the same way, so getting back into the swing of things would not be very different or challenging. Or so I thought; then March arrived.
One by one, like for so many others, my gigs for the spring, the summer, and finally the fall were cancelled. Concerts, theatre, and club dates for which I had tickets were cancelled, jazz festivals were cancelled and, as COVID-19 continued to make dramatic changes to our lives, much of my life as I knew it came to a grinding halt. As someone who lives alone—albeit in a wonderfully socially active and supportive new condo community—I found that the absence of getting together to attend live jazz had deprived me of most of my social interaction and I found it difficult to be alone so much of the time. I love living alone but only because I enjoy so much the time I spend with friends and family.
But I still had MJF to occupy me and it provided me with a wonderful distraction to what was going on. Little did I know how many new skills I would learn. Isn’t that, after all, part of the joy and reward for taking on volunteer projects?
Because we had begun so much of the work on MJF, we were already quite far along in the process and were receiving many applications to perform. The new Selection Committee for the year was in place and I was sharing the applications and supporting material with them and starting to develop the website. At this early stage, the news about the coronavirus had not quite hit home and we continued along our path and programmed the festival with about sixteen local and out-of-town groups. But, as things developed, we held off on contacting any of the artists until we were more certain about presenting the live festival in Merrickville as had been done since its inception in 2011.
When the time finally came to decide whether to mount MJF 2020 as a live presentation, it was very difficult. We had put together a survey to send out to our regular supporters to gauge their feelings about attending a live festival, assuring them that we would have all the recommended COVID-19 safety protocols in place. When the Director and I analyzed the results, we concluded that it confirmed what we had begun to think: it was simply too risky for us to proceed with the live festival. We decided to postpone everything until 2021 when we could carry forward the results of the Selection Committee and put on our live event.
The Director and I were not considering putting on a virtual festival when we made the heart-breaking decision to cancel live MJF in 2020. Neither of us had any direct experience and the thought of the work it would require to do it was more than we wanted to take on. But eventually, with the encouragement and support of local partners, we put together a much smaller series of five concerts and one masterclass so that MJF 2020 Virtual Edition would take place and give us all the opportunity to celebrate the 10th Anniversary after all. Like so many others, we went about the task of learning how presenting online content and performances works, how we could offer our programming as well as animate it in interesting ways, and all sorts of new ideas. And so MJF 2020 Virtual Edition was born and, after many weeks of learning by doing, we are pleased and proud to present it from October 15 through 18, 2020. We look forward to welcoming many of our dedicated supporters and new fans from everywhere. Complete information about the festival is available at www.merrickvillesjazzfest.com.
In Conclusion
As much as I miss performing and all the social connection that putting together and presenting concerts involves, I haven’t missed that quite as much as going out to hear live music, especially jazz. One of my favourite sayings is “I’m an okay jazz singer, but an excellent music fan”. And, while being a fan for me has meant buying an artist’s CDs, helping to promote their performances online, and occasionally helping an artist organize an appearance or a complete tour, it’s mostly meant attending as many of their live concerts as possible. Since March, I have attended many online concerts as well as a lot of didactic programming in terms of masterclasses, skills workshops, and lectures, and I’ve found it very rewarding.
I look forward to safely reuniting with friends to once again enjoy live jazz performances whenever that wonderful day arrives.
Karen Oxorn
I started the year off with some jazz cruises in the Caribbean, as I’d been doing since I went on my first one in 2017. I’d also begun hosting intimate jazz concerts in my new condo and was looking forward to continuing that new tradition. And finally, I had a variety of volunteer activities planned for 2020.
In December 2019 into January and February 2020, I began actively working on the planning and programming for the 10th Anniversary Edition of Merrickville’s Jazz Fest (MJF), having agreed to return as its Artistic Director for this one very special milestone year. This time around, I took on the additional duties of creating content for the MJF website and handling its Social Media. In the three years since I’d stepped down, there had been a few innovations, but the festival was still planned and programmed in the same way, so getting back into the swing of things would not be very different or challenging. Or so I thought; then March arrived.
One by one, like for so many others, my gigs for the spring, the summer, and finally the fall were cancelled. Concerts, theatre, and club dates for which I had tickets were cancelled, jazz festivals were cancelled and, as COVID-19 continued to make dramatic changes to our lives, much of my life as I knew it came to a grinding halt. As someone who lives alone—albeit in a wonderfully socially active and supportive new condo community—I found that the absence of getting together to attend live jazz had deprived me of most of my social interaction and I found it difficult to be alone so much of the time. I love living alone but only because I enjoy so much the time I spend with friends and family.
But I still had MJF to occupy me and it provided me with a wonderful distraction to what was going on. Little did I know how many new skills I would learn. Isn’t that, after all, part of the joy and reward for taking on volunteer projects?
Because we had begun so much of the work on MJF, we were already quite far along in the process and were receiving many applications to perform. The new Selection Committee for the year was in place and I was sharing the applications and supporting material with them and starting to develop the website. At this early stage, the news about the coronavirus had not quite hit home and we continued along our path and programmed the festival with about sixteen local and out-of-town groups. But, as things developed, we held off on contacting any of the artists until we were more certain about presenting the live festival in Merrickville as had been done since its inception in 2011.
When the time finally came to decide whether to mount MJF 2020 as a live presentation, it was very difficult. We had put together a survey to send out to our regular supporters to gauge their feelings about attending a live festival, assuring them that we would have all the recommended COVID-19 safety protocols in place. When the Director and I analyzed the results, we concluded that it confirmed what we had begun to think: it was simply too risky for us to proceed with the live festival. We decided to postpone everything until 2021 when we could carry forward the results of the Selection Committee and put on our live event.
The Director and I were not considering putting on a virtual festival when we made the heart-breaking decision to cancel live MJF in 2020. Neither of us had any direct experience and the thought of the work it would require to do it was more than we wanted to take on. But eventually, with the encouragement and support of local partners, we put together a much smaller series of five concerts and one masterclass so that MJF 2020 Virtual Edition would take place and give us all the opportunity to celebrate the 10th Anniversary after all. Like so many others, we went about the task of learning how presenting online content and performances works, how we could offer our programming as well as animate it in interesting ways, and all sorts of new ideas. And so MJF 2020 Virtual Edition was born and, after many weeks of learning by doing, we are pleased and proud to present it from October 15 through 18, 2020. We look forward to welcoming many of our dedicated supporters and new fans from everywhere. Complete information about the festival is available at www.merrickvillesjazzfest.com.
In Conclusion
As much as I miss performing and all the social connection that putting together and presenting concerts involves, I haven’t missed that quite as much as going out to hear live music, especially jazz. One of my favourite sayings is “I’m an okay jazz singer, but an excellent music fan”. And, while being a fan for me has meant buying an artist’s CDs, helping to promote their performances online, and occasionally helping an artist organize an appearance or a complete tour, it’s mostly meant attending as many of their live concerts as possible. Since March, I have attended many online concerts as well as a lot of didactic programming in terms of masterclasses, skills workshops, and lectures, and I’ve found it very rewarding.
I look forward to safely reuniting with friends to once again enjoy live jazz performances whenever that wonderful day arrives.
Karen Oxorn