The importance of the arts to daily living
When town centre managers talk about the night-time economy, they are referring to the businesses that provide catering, hospitality, entertainment and the arts - broadly speaking.
During the worst periods of the pandemic especially from March 2020 when the so-called R rate was above 1, death rates soared and health services in many countries were under huge pressure. People were told to keep their distance and to stay at home. The evening economy was shut down.
In many cases singers, musicians, actors, dancers and others - as well as their audiences - were deprived of working performances with venues large and small shut down for month after long month. It led to hard times for a whole range of professional artists and performers.
For the general public it has meant finding ways to be resilient in the face of loss, to deal with difficult times, and to celebrate what we have and love doing.
Arising from the unavailability of live artistic activity, some institutions found creative ways to keep the wheels of culture going in other ways. From the privacy of their own homes, for example, classical music fans could avail of "virtual" concerts.
Orchestras including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Mariinsky in St Petersburg and the Berlin Philharmonic broadcast a mixture of live performances from empty halls or recorded events from their extensive digital archives. Universities provided night classes on-line. And literary organisations, such as the Irish Times, provided live interviews with writers, sportspeople, and others for global audiences.
Since early summer 2021 and aided by the roll-out of vaccines especially in "first-world" nations, nights out in restaurants and in places of entertainment began to return with considerable support from the general public. "Freedom Day" was the ultimate (and prophetically inaccurate) slogan of the U.K's Prime Minister as recently as July.
The deprivation of nights out on the town has been gradually eased across the continent in recent months, culminating in the withdrawal of most restrictions as winter 2021/22 approaches. In many parts of Europe, however, as people gather indoors avoiding the incoming cold season's elements, Governments' easements have coincided with a concerning (if predictable) deterioration in infection rates and the Delta variant.
And looming on (perhaps above) the horizon are warnings of variant B.1.1.529, or Omicron. This is the latest and potentially most infectious variant of Covid, as illustrated by the early discovery of the first two cases in the U.K. on 27 November[i] and a larger number in the Netherlands[ii].
Examples of summer 2021 reopening in Belfast
Cinema
Whereas my gym reopened on 30 April, it was mid-July before cinemas recommenced business here, with night-clubs having to wait a further 3-4 months. Picture House audience numbers were initially restricted in July and August, which helped to make customers feel safer. Two of the first three films that we saw in the QFT (Queens Film Theatre) were music documentaries, nostalgia being an appropriate if accidental theme.
"Summer of Soul" is set in 1969 Harlem, the same year as the more heralded Woodstock festival. It presents brilliant performances from Mahalia Jackson, Fifth Dimension, Stevie Wonder, Mavis Staples, and many others. A celebration of black American culture. What a wonderful reintroduction to the joys of cinema.
"Jazz on a Summer's Day" was a similar film, set a decade earlier at the 1958 Newport jazz festival - where everybody there seemed to enjoy smoking with impunity. That aside, the cast list was a who's who of jazz - people in their youth like Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk and again Mahalia Jackson.
In between those two films, we went to see "The Courier," a superb political thriller based on the true story of businessman Greville Wynne and set against the background of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 and the threat of nuclear war. Depiction of the latter reminded me vividly of life as a 13-year-old in grammar school, in particular the day that almost became the start of World War 3. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Wynn with an outstanding performance. The power of a movie to resurrect forgotten memories.
The best of three more recent films which we saw was Wes Anderson's superb "The French Dispatch." We saw it a week prior to Halowe'en, when audience numbers were rather less restricted. A little masterpiece set in Ennui-sur-Blasé (translating would be a bore, n'est-ce pas?) and with an impressive cast-list which included Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Saoirse Ronan and Owen Wilson. Its quirkiness reminded me of the Oscar-winning Grand Budapest Hotel by the same director in 2014.
Concerts
Most if not all symphony orchestras begin their annual season in mid-late September. Given all of the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and consequent risks in the complex task of planning concerts arranging conductors and soloists, it was a substantial achievement for the Ulster Orchestra to open its 2021/22 season on schedule on its usual late September date.
We have attended four out of its first five concerts held in its home venue, the Ulster Hall. Although audience numbers were relatively restricted for the 24 September and 8 October concerts, the later easing of restrictions on numbers has not, yet anyway, tempted full house sales.
This despite strong repertoire which has included Dvorak's cello concerto, Brahms's Symphony number 4, Chopin's first piano concerto, Beethoven Symphony number 6, Korngold's violin concerto, Mozart's flute concerto number 1, Fanny Mendelssohn's overture in C Major, Schumann's Spring Symphony - with accomplished international soloists playing at each concert.
Apart from having to wear face-masks during concerts, concert audiences receive programmes on-line rather than having to buy printed copies. These sentences from the 25 November concert's programme notes caught my attention - and that of my wife. They convey Robert Schumann's awareness of the enormous act he was following in daring to compose a symphony less than 15 years after the death of Beethoven:-
"Schumann's Spring Symphony was an instant success. His great friend Felix Mendelssohn conducted the world premiere in the Schumann's home city of Leipzig in March 1841. And on 1 September that year, nine months after the conception of the Symphony Clara gave birth to the couple's first child, a daughter Marie."
December 3's programme includes the magnificent Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky and Shostakovich's beatiful piano concerto number 2 with soloist Steven Osborne. December continues with a series of festive concerts, one of which includes the Belfast Philharmonic Choir, and another being the annual performance of Handel's Messiah.
In addition to its annual programme, the Orchestra presents other events, often in collaboration with institutions like Northern Ireland Opera and the BBC. One such recent event was the "Fanfare for the Makers" BBC Invitation Concert recorded in the Ulster Hall on Monday 8 November for Radio 3. Its purpose was to celebrate the corporation's 40 years of partnership with the Ulster Orchestra.
It consisted of a large programme of music (including some newly commissioned works by local composers) and poetry read by four well-known actors. It was broadcast nationwide three days later. This free concert attracted a full house and received a rapturous ovation. Bigger audiences restore much-missed enthusiasm and a better atmosphere in the hall.
The Orchestra's recent announcement of 11 further concerts running from January and ending the season as normal in June 2022 will be music to its fans' ears. We read that the Netherlands Government's new November/December restrictions prohibit the Concertgebouw Orchestra from performing evening concerts for the next three weeks (at least, possibly).
Caution and continued adherence to public health advice during and beyond the festive season, it seems, remain the by-words if we want the evening economy to continue.
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| Nativity 2021 style |
The other concert venue which we have visited recently is the city's 1895 Frank Matcham-designed landmark, The Grand Opera House. As soon as its reopening after a £12m refurbishment was announced for early October, I deemed it essential to attend the opening show. This was the West End production of the musical "Six," a modern girl-band take about the wives of King Henry the 8th.
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| "Six" viewed from the gods, Grand Opera House Belfast 10 October 2021 |
The self-induced imperative to attend was driven by the previous big reopening approximately forty years ago when, after being bombed during the Troubles and closed for about four years, a group of ten of us travelled to Belfast from Omagh to see Rowan Atkinson (of Not the Nine O'Clock News and later Mr Bean fame) single-handedly spark a beginning of evening normality to a deprived and damaged city centre.
Back to the present and with restrictions on audience numbers easing gradually, we attended two more events in the Opera House. One was to see the Belfast International Festival event "The Great Irish Songbook,"[iii] with Sligo-based traditional music band Dervish centre stage. The large traditional ensemble was supported by a galaxy of Scottish and Irish talent like Glen Hansard, Eddi Reader, Cara Dillon, Karen Matheson, Brian Kennedy and Belfast's Open Arts Community Choir. That was ten days before Halowe'en and the place was rocking.
We returned to the Opera House in early November. This performance was another West End musical, "Hairspray." Unlike "Six" which was a 70 minute one-part show, meaning less opportunity for social interaction, "Hairspray" was a conventional two-part performance. Such was the quality and liveliness of the latter, that it is a show which we would recommend and probably see it again.
The late spring and summer have given people the taste for a return to socialising, dining out, going to the cinema and to concerts. Audiences support concert and cinema-going as a stimulus to happiness and to good health. Sláinte. Anything that alleviates pressure on the National Health Service is positive. Nowhere is this more applicable as it is to Northern Ireland which has a history of coping with hard times and with learning how to survive artistic and cultural lockdown.
©Michael McSorley 2021
Postscript:-
Previous articles in this Covid-19 series include the following:-
Part 1 (24 March 2020) A Test for Elected Leaders[iv]
Part 2 (11 April 2020) Coping with Contagion, a Survival Strategy.[v]
Part 3 (30 April 2020) The New Vocabulary[vi]
Part 4 (21 May 2020) Following the Science[vii]
Part 5 (11 June 2020) Beautiful books[viii]
Part 6 (25 June 2020) Stone Circles[ix]
Part 7 (26 July 2020) Finding positives in a global crisis[x]
Part 8 (21 August 2020) Humour for the pandemic[xi]
Part 9 (28 September 2020) Holidays at Home[xii]
Part 10 (10 October 2020) The London Marathon[xiii]
Part 11 (30 October 2020) Hallowe'en[xiv]
Part 12 (21 November 2020) Discord and Division[xv]
References/links
[i] The Observer 28 November 2021 David Cox "It's not a twist on Delta as people were expecting but a worrying new thing" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/27/omicrons-full-impact-will-be-felt-in-countries-where-fewer-are-vaccinated
[ii] BBC News 28 November 2021 "13 test positive for Omicron after South Africa-Netherlands flights" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59451103
[iii] https://belfastinternationalartsfestival.com/event/the-great-irish-songbook/
[iv] https://michaelcovid19.blogspot.com/2020/03/a-test-for-elected-leaders.html
[v] https://michaelcovid19.blogspot.com/2020/04/coping-with-contagion-survival-strategy.html
[vi] https://michaelcovid19.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-new-vocabulary.html
[vii] https://michaelcovid19.blogspot.com/2020/05/following-science.html
[viii] https://michaelcovid19.blogspot.com/2020/06/beautiful-books.html
[ix] https://michaelcovid19.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-archaeology-of-stone-circles.html
[x] https://michaelcovid19.blogspot.com/2020/07/finding-positives-in-global-crisis.html
[xi] https://michaelcovid19.blogspot.com/2020/08/humour-for-pandemic.html
[xii] https://michaelcovid19.blogspot.com/2020/09/holidays-at-home.html
[xiii] https://michaelcovid19.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-virtual-london-marathon.html
