The art of stumbling onto concerts has almost never been easier as the local performance world takes to Facebook live.
Time on Facebook is increasing as people rediscover the social aspect of social networks under the watchful eye of social isolation. A feed can be full of surprises: Thursday night saw An Historic (Adam Matlock) wailing on Facebook live and YouTube simultaneously as part of the Quarantined Series, a statewide collaboration of musicians playing scheduled concerts online to help ease social distancing. While Matlock was playing, the page noted that Murderous Chanteuse would follow at 8 p.m. (To see what’s coming up next in the Quarantined Series and watch previous concerts, visit its Facebook page.)
Matlock threw himself into his show. In the preamble for each song, he talked about when he wrote it and the emotional context in which he did it. The set ranged in tone and recency. Some songs dated from 2014 and others were very recent. Some were subdued ballads and others were operatic, energetic, ballistic anthems that seemed to pop off the computer screen. Matlock was self-conscious and self-referential: ““If you saw my facial expression change, it’s because a stinkbug just walked across one of the devices streaming this, so if you see a leg, spring is still here!”
The novelty of seeing a musician in his own space in a performative context provided a sense of connection different than that of an in-person show, but it was nonetheless personal. No one needs to speak over a rowdy crowd, but at the same time there is no way to feed off of a crowd’s raw energy. To perform music is to share a very specific bond with the audience that requires presence, attention, and the shared emotional journey; to perform music online is to be a bit self-conscious and sense the lack of others, or perhaps the barrier between audience and performer. But Matlock was game to speak through while pointing out difference, especially with staying on schedule. Noting that usually a sound guy would help him stay on task, he sheepishly admitted he was already behind. “I wrote out a really long set realizing that there wasn’t going to be a sound guy to tell me there was five minutes left,” he said.
A few days later, on Sunday afternoon — during the brunch hours, when they would have normally played at Elm City Market — Isabella Mendes and Flavio Lira added a dose of tropicalia to quarantine, with a livestreamed concert that included samba, soul, and bossa nova. The camera canted high above them, almost like a bird’s eye view, added intimacy to the show. Lira’s virtuosic bass solos over Mendes’ sweeping piano lines screamed for mimosas and a tropical breeze, preferably on a beach far away (but still maintaining social distancing). Mendes commented that Facebook passersby should bring their favorite brunch food and sit in on the tunes. The steadily increasing numbers of viewers as the concert progressed seemed to indicate listeners were complying.
As time goes by, e‑concerts are filling the time on Facebook in unprecedented ways. Rarely does one scroll without encountering a watch party or other group of musicians playing, and the creative approaches to staging are showing. Musicians are showcasing themselves in their homes, or from empty venues, and the intimate look into their lives behind the stages are just as compelling as staged performances. Mendes and Lira seemed crammed into a corner, but the smallness made the breezy sounds all the more interesting; from two instruments came a wave of relaxing, refreshing music.
Posted by Brian Slattery on Monday, March 23, 2020
Mendes took time to greet all the commenters who appeared in Facebook chat, noting fellow musicians, and asking for requests from the audience. She smiled. “I keep forgetting to look at the camera — usually I look at the computer,” she said. And then she broke into another ballad.
“How’s everyone doing? Hi Peter, all the way from Germany!” Lira said. He paused to show the world his coffee mug, which said “Namaste in Bed.” The pair then broke into an uptempo version of “My Funny Valentine,” as if Chet Baker had grown up in Rio de Janeiro. Crescendoing into a breakdown that was more than the microphone could bear, Mendes and Lira took the audience on a journey that felt years away from pending economic and social crisis, to the intimacy of a love ballad where social distancing isn’t necessary.
The transformative emotional power of music to take away immediate crisis and circumstance and whisk a Facebook page to Ipanema is palpable and necessary in an age of compulsively checking Twitter for far too long every morning. “Especially since we’re so isolated, it’s nice to see people tune in for a concert,” Mendes said. She was effusive in her interactions with her audience, bantering back and forth. Lira was game as well, cracking jokes about song choice.
“There are two kinds of music: major and minor,” he said. To laugh along with musicians playing their way through social isolation is a gift.
