Many symphony groups cancelled their live concerts these summer and spring seasons, but thankfully their performances did not end. The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), America’s second oldest symphony orchestra, moved online to accommodate and connect its audiences.

After cancelling their concerts in March, the BSO launched a BSO at Home, an online platform designed to intellectual and creativity stimulate music-lovers. Here, audiences get to listen to archived performances, learn about the orchestra’s behind-the-scenes, as well as access lesson plays and explore the group’s projects. 

The BSO is also know for its annual Tanglewood Festival, which the group began hosting in the 1930s. Many attendees wondered what would happen to this musical staple. 

Fear not! The Tanglewood Festival lives! It has been transformed into an online gallery of education, recitals, and encores. In a statement on their website, the Boston Symphony Orchestra said, 

Although we cannot gather in person this summer, we are pleased to be able to keep the spirit of Tanglewood alive through the Tanglewood 2020 Online Festival, a series of digital offerings for all to enjoy. The festival will include both free-of-charge archival offerings as well as newly created content available for purchase. 

The show (well, the festival) goes on today! The Boston Symphony Orchestra adapted its programming so that the musicians can continue connecting and enticing us.

The pandemic did not bog down the Tanglewood Festival as the BSO  now streams new content each Saturdays. Tanglewood Online also embraces the world stage by offering recordings of concert venues outside of Boston.  

Lucky for music appreciators, technology has allowed numerous music festivals to jump into the digital plane. While there is a magic to sitting in a concert hall or on a picnic blanket, we can still satisfy our music cravings and feel music run through us.  

Many music groups still offer education to the public. The BSO’s Tanglewood Learning Institute Online allows audiences to immerse themselves in music and craft.

This Institute includes offerings like ShopTalks, which are informal “conversations among conductors, composers, and performers that contextualize and enrich Tanglewood concert experiences.“

There is also an OpenForm, which is “presented in conjunction with Great Performers in Recital from Tanglewood and Recitals from the World Stage. Each collection includes three presentations, a panel discussion, and a live Q&A.”

Tanglewood Online has extensive programming, ensuring music remains accessible to American and global audiences.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has taken impressive steps to digitalize their content and embrace quarantined audiences through the BSO at Home and the Tanglewood Festival. In a time when it’s easy to feel isolated and bored, musical innovations like these help us feel more human.

Why not check out BSO and your own local symphony groups and music festivals! Perhaps innovation is blooming there too.

Images taken from the BSO’s website. 

Live theater isn’t the only performing arts body adapting to today’s limitations. Many dance companies are innovating their programs and performances to continue reaching their audiences. The San Francisco Ballet is one such group. 

Founded in 1933, the San Francisco Ballet was forced to (temporarily) close its doors earlier this year after the state ordered shelter-in-place. The company did what many performance art organizations have done: it made archived recordings of past pieces available to view online.

But the San Francisco Ballet dancers where not content. They had to perform. They felt their creativity surge, and they kept moving. 

Image from the San Francisco Ballet’s website

Tucked away in their homes, these performers recorded themselves dancing, expressing their mastery of art and feeling. They also used Zoom, a platform many of us have grown used to, to interact with each other during their remote sequences. 

Kelly Tweeddale, the executive director of the San Francisco Ballet, described these performances’ tantalizing brevity, saying “It’s very ephemeral. It’s very temporary.”

But that’s not all this group has been cooking up! Experimentation struts onto the stage as the San Francisco Ballet plays with a new project. Under the direction of four choreographers, the group is creating a new kind of performance. 

According to a Marketplace article by Lukas Southard and Nova Safo, “Performing arts innovate in desperate times,” the SF Ballet is organizing a recorded performance that relies on dancers being in different locations.

Much like Richard Nelson’s Zoom plays, this single digital performance adapts to today’s social distancing needs and technological innovation to invigorate a performance art recipe. 

Southard and Safo note that this 

 “new [technological] format takes classical dance off of the stage and into a new environment where the artists can manipulate perspective through video.”

Image from the San Francisco Ballet’s website

This company also created “Sequentia.” This is a film, which  captures ten San Francisco Ballet dancers performing a choreographic chain letter (dance) in separate locations. This digital dance letter is meant to keep family, friends, and communities connected. It seamlessly moves audiences through several locations, unifying people through movement.

 As the San Francisco Ballet notes on their website, 

“The film originated with a dancer who improvised a six-second solo to the music, and this choreography was passed along to the next dancer who picked up where the previous one left off. This process continued through all ten dancers.”

Click here to watch Sequenita, a free video, and learn more about this project.  

The San Francisco Ballet shows how storytelling, dance, and creative unity can adapt to new social needs with the same power and creative spirit as before.