By Jonathan Weiss I
RL’s first-ever virtual Recital Hall boasts everything from intimate in-home performances to composites of recordings made literally across the world. It features a remarkable variety of genre and production, with two solo acts, a live in-house act, and two acts recorded in separate places and edited together.
Mr. Opdycke and I both recorded solo acts. Mr. O played Billy Joel’s “Two Thousand Years,” pointing out that, as with so many classic songs, it speaks especially deeply to us in this current crisis. I got the idea to improvise off of the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” in Mr. O’s Music Theory class, where he encouraged us to play for each other over Zoom. Since I was playing on my home piano without a live audience, I noticed that I focused less on stage presence. Instead, I was able to give an abbreviated demo of my compositional process.
I noticed that I focused less on stage presence. Instead, I was able to give an abbreviated demo of my compositional process.
The versatile Justin Shaw IV gave a live in-house performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto with his father accompanying on piano; he also played cello in the second movement of Schubert’s Piano Trio no. 2 with Heshie Liebowitz III and Alex Yin III.
According to Heshie, editing together this traditional chamber performance with modern technology presented fascinating challenges and insights. Heshie first recorded his part so that the other instrumentalists could use it as a backing track for their own parts. Then he tweaked and snipped their recordings. It was especially hard to sync up the parts where only two of the three instruments were playing. For example, when the piano was silent, Alex and Justin couldn’t adhere to a backing track. Even if Alex and Justin had perfectly precise timing (they’re not far off!), tempo in classical music is often supposed to be fluid.
Heshie said that the challenges were worth it. Constructing virtual performances is the only option in a world that desperately needs hope: “We did not want the current social distancing requirements to prevent us from making music together.”
The other edited act was a carnatic performance by Hari Narayanan I, Vishnu Emani III, and Hari’s cousin from Bangalore, India. Like Heshie, Hari first recorded himself with his iPad and then had his friends play over it using headphones. It took him a whole day to edit the recordings in iMovie; even a tenth of a second of delay between tracks was very noticeable, especially with the percussion. Hari also noticed that his own video was out of sync with his individual audio. Since in carnatic music the vocalist indicates tempo with their hand, this was especially hilarious.
Heshie said that the challenges were worth it… “We did not want the current social distancing requirements to prevent us from making music together.”
Balancing the audio gave Hari the opportunity to produce a cleaner sound than in a live performance. In a world where musicians are expected to be just as competent at a DAW as they are at their instrument, this is a great time to practice mastering audio.
Hari said that these times encouraged him to reach out to his talented Bangalore cousin, who said “place doesn’t matter anymore—you can ask anyone to play.” If you listen to the audio, it sounds like everyone was in the same room. Hari agreed with Heshie that he hopes to make more songs, despite the extra work: “You’ve got to keep people happy.”
Mr. Opdycke pointed out another silver lining to the virtual approach. Since the Recital Hall is on YouTube, it is available to students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, past parents, and other friends of the school. Participation is also more inclusive for newer performers, since you can do multiple takes before submitting. Mr. Opdycke hopes to receive more submissions in the coming weeks from faculty, parents, siblings, and students! Let’s continue to foster a sense of community and share our musical creativity with each other in these times.
