Specifics of 2021 season still being decided

by Michael Cobb

Because of the continually changing nature of the Covid-19 situation, plans to open the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival to the public this summer are still tentative. 

James Nelson, general manager of the festival, explains that, as a program of the Yale School of Music, the festival is bound by the university’s virus protocols, which in some cases are more stringent than CDC or state recommendations. The Chamber Music Festival is required to submit plans to a university health and safety committee, which then examines how many students and faculty are coming, how they’re rehearsing and how they’re being accommodated. Yale will send an advisory team to Norfolk to look at all relevant spaces, check for adequate ventilation and determine how many people can be in each room. 

 “There are specialists and epidemiologists among Yale’s faculty, including some who work for the Biden administration,” Nelson says. “In addition, the NWCT Arts Alliance gets people together every three weeks to discuss what we need to be looking at in terms of opening. We’re focused on how to protect the public and not add to the problem. This is the approach that Yale is taking from the highest levels. We’re still early in the management phase of this pandemic. My wish is that people will be patient, which will help us get out of this sooner,” Nelson says. 

Also uncertain is whether the festival will be able to have live audiences at concerts. They are preparing for several scenarios, and Nelson says they have the capacity to adjust with a few weeks’ notice. If they are unable to invite the public in, performances will be live-streamed to audiences and will remain online for a couple of days.

One silver lining of the pandemic is that it has given Yale the time and the incentive to improve its production aesthetics. The program recently converted many of its spotlights to LEDs, which allow for a greater variety of coloration and also reduce heat inside the shed, something that musicians and audiences alike will appreciate. LEDs are also more efficient and therefore environmentally friendly. “In addition to outstanding sound quality, live-streamed concerts will have stellar visual quality,” says Nelson.

The festival has also upgraded its video recording technology. “Last year we had a single camera with a straight shot, and there was no real variety. This year we’re upgrading to four cameras. We’ll have a director who knows the music and will be able to instruct the filming crew to zoom in on players when they take a solo,” Nelson says. Concerts will be accessible to more people via the festival’s website, norfolkmusic.org, as well as their YouTube channel. 

The audio quality remains outstanding at the Music Shed. “We treat the entire building as a studio and have state-of-the-art recording equipment,” Nelson adds. 

Melvin Chen, director of the Chamber Music Festival, acknowledges, “I can’t definitively say that the summer program will proceed, as we don’t have approval yet. However, we’re planning as if we will. We’ve accepted fellows and have faculty in place who will be coming. We may be forced to cancel at the last minute, but we’re optimistic that we’ll have summer activities with students, faculty and concerts.”

“It will be a different summer,” adds Chen. “But my hope is that we can welcome audiences back to the Shed. As a performer, you need the feeling of human connection, of having people listening and responding to what you’re doing. It’s something we all thirst for.”