For our final Entrepreneur of the Month feature of the year, we wanted to shine a spotlight on a few of the innovative and creative adaptations made by Jacobs faculty, staff, and students in response to this new and crazy world of 2020. This three-part series is just a glimpse of the many ways that members of our community have channeled inspiration, resilience, and determination to find new ways to keep their art alive and connecting people, even while physically apart!
Part 1: Performance in Virtual Spaces:
Ana y su sombra | Parts, Together | Bonnets
Reimagining Opera for Kids: Ana y su sombra
Kim Carballo (Senior Lecturer, Chamber and Collaborative Music and Coordinating Opera Coach, IU Opera Theater) and Michael Shell (Visiting Lecturer in Music, Voice) pivoted to a virtual approach for their outreach program Reimagining Opera for Kids (ROK), to replace the performances that they would normally do in communities and schools. Kim and Michael share about their process for creating the remotely filmed performance of Ana y su sombra, by Gabriela Ortiz, a Spanish-language operetta about a little girl and her shadow.
KC: We usually provide live performances to schools, community centers, libraries, hospitals, but obviously that wasn’t going to work this year, both for our performers and the audience members, so there was a lot of brainstorming, and we just decided to go entirely virtual. Everybody coached independently via Zoom and then Michael did this magic work with the staging.
MS: When Kim asked me to do this, I was like, “Yeah, sure! Yes, let’s do this!” One, I had nothing going on, because everything was canceled, and two, I thought, this is definitely going to be a stretch, this is going to be a challenge. Ultimately, what we ended up seeing, given the whimsical and fantasy kind of elements of the show, was that there were things that we could do visually on film that we couldn’t necessarily recreate in the same way when you do it live. For example, what we could do color-wise with people, because we could make the shadows grayscale, and we could also play with the size of the people, making them smaller or bigger, to go with the visual idea that depending on where you stand in the light, a shadow could be large or small.
But the biggest challenge was putting it together initially, because Zoom doesn’t have the functionality that it has now. For example, as the host, I can now move the screens around. I can put people in different places. When we were rehearsing it, the performers would show up at the time they showed up, and dependent on when they did, that was where their screen was. So it didn’t matter whether or not I thought, okay, Sombra is going to be in the center, and when you look to the right, you’re going to see Yeya, or you look to the left and you’ll see Asombro. So figuring out how to make that work did take some time. But ultimately it was a really great challenge. Definitely kept me occupied for that entire rehearsal process. When we would try to run things, I basically just had to pretend like it was all happening at the same time. Sometimes there were moments where I was just watching one screen, because I needed to make sure that even if I heard it faster, I needed to know how much of a lag one person had so that I knew that they were actually doing it at the right time.
KC: This music is generally pretty challenging—it’s by Gabriela Ortiz—just on its own, never mind not being together [in person]. ROK commissioned it, and when we first premiered it in 2013, we had to have a conductor, otherwise it would all disintegrate.
This time, the pianist laid down the first track, and I’ve got to say, big kudos to the instrumentalists, because they were doing it even without having the verbal cues from the singers to know what to cue off of. The pianist, Rebecca Luppe, made a really solid base layer to put everything on top of, and I think that’s a big chunk of what helped us. And Andrew Downs—we had an assistant music director for the first time ever, and he was great.
Project Jumpstart: So after your Zoom rehearsals, what was the filming of the final product like?
MS: So we had tons of rehearsals over Zoom to stage it, and a couple in the front yard of Kim’s house. We had to have as many rehearsals as we could because they were going to go off and record it on their own, and I wasn’t going to be able to see it. That was the plan to mitigate sort of anybody being around anyone.
KC: And our videographer, Jon Stante, helped to set up the camera so that it was as much just “set a point and go” as possible. So we had a couple of ginormous green screens, and Amy Williams, the production manager, basically drove it around all over the place.
PJ: A labor of love!
KC: Everyone was there, heart and soul, for sure. There was an unusual level of commitment to the characters, especially considering that they weren’t actually there with anybody. You’re basically talking to a lampshade. And they still managed to make this seem like conversation. They did their homework, knowing what everybody else was saying. We also offer a real-time conversation with the cast as a follow up to the performance, via Zoom or FaceTime or whatever, so that there’s still that interactive element.
MS: Jon did some extraordinary work, because I know that it took a little coordinate the sound with them to get it to all sort of line up. The other thing was, the first time we went through it, it was like, okay, let’s just do it and try to not be as fussy. And then as we did it, we were like, oh, but wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this, or that? And Jon was so game to do it, and we kept writing Kim like, “We need a little more time!” He was figuring out how to make this work as well, so it was like a big experiment amongst all of us about, what can we do to make this as complete and as interesting as possible? Like Kim said, everybody brought a level of themselves to it that was just exceptional. There was no one that was taking it for granted or not giving their all, and it was really a special thing to happen at a time where there was so much uncertainty, there was so much unknown, and we were doing this thing that was somewhat like what we typically do, but completely different.
PJ: How do you find that inspiration and creativity when there are so many restrictions?
KC: I feel like it’s a little bit like those cooking shows, where it’s like, you have brussels sprouts and coconut flakes, now go make something, you know? But in a certain sense, understanding what the boundaries were made it clearer. Maybe not easier, but made it clearer about what we needed to do if we wanted to be able to fulfill our mission, which is offering these performances to area youth and children and giving emerging professionals, or people who are in the community and enjoy performing, a chance to share their art. Those are pretty specific things and needing to do them within these particular boundaries of not breathing on each other made it really clear what we were playing with.
MS: In some cases for some schools it may be not as accessible, it just depends on their Internet or their capabilities technologically speaking. But at the same time, I think it does give the opportunity for it to get out that maybe is not as difficult as maybe the bus and truck of it all, you know? Loading it up, unloading, you know…And that’s taxing as it is, and it also takes a whole day, and you’re done. That’s all you do. And so what this provided was a way for this to have a life that’s not dependent on the schedules of the singers so that it could be seen whenever it’s most convenient for the schools, I’m imagining. And this idea of having the added component of talking to the students fills in that Q&A portion of it in a really great way. It’s a sustainable model, I think, for an alternative. I think we all agree that live performance is really important. There’s nothing like it. But as an alternative, there may be a time where it’s like, this piece would be really cool to do as a video performance, because we could do things that could maybe turn on a kid’s mind to go, wow, that makes me interested in X, or, I never thought you could do something like that. So the potential for this generation of new art lovers and new people whose minds are going to start to explore and question other ways of doing things allows opera to be very relevant in that regard. It’s not always about the story, but it’s about how the production becomes relevant to these kids, and I think this video, this production does that in a lot of ways. It makes it more relevant to them because it seems more accessible, because it’s something they’re used to in some ways. Not saying that we shouldn’t go in there at some point and be live, but I think it’s a really interesting way of exposing them to this.
And it all came out because we had to do it, which is ironic, you know?
- Visit the ROK website: reimaginingoperaforkids.org
Nathan Fischer: Parts, Together
When the pandemic started, Nathan Fischer (Career Advisor, Office of Entrepreneurship and Career Development and Director, Twisted Spruce Music Foundation) began to brainstorm about what kind of project could bring people together to make music even while physically separated. He ended up commissioning a piece of new music, performed by 100 guitarists from around the world and synchronized to animation that tells an uplifting story of unity and collaboration.
NF: The 2020 World Ensemble performing Parts, Together started as a community building project with 100 classical guitarists whose collective recordings are synchronized to animation. The music composition is by the Australian composer Azariah Felton, animation by Chia-Hsin Lee from Taiwan, audio mixing and post-production by Jamie Tagg, and the project was directed and produced by Nathan Fischer. The team is comprised of artists and musicians representing 26 countries.
Rising out of the 2020 pandemic, the World Ensemble project created a new music performance and collaboration model for artists in quarantine. The animation for Parts, Together includes visuals that allow anyone to feel invited and included in a classical guitar performance, and underscores that we are a global community, uniquely diverse, and #AloneTogether.
PJ: What was your inspiration for this project?
NF: The idea took shape right after the lockdown in March 2020. As with many people, I felt the need to connect with other musicians, and so I imagined a project that would give people stuck at home the opportunity to direct their energy to performing. I wanted to give people around the world the opportunity to participate in a common project, something that before the pandemic might have been impossible because we were all too busy with our own lives. I could see other musicians, orchestras, college students, engaging and creating split-screen videos by the masses. However, these virtual performances usually had two things in common: they involved people who already knew each other, and, although most of them were very engaging, I felt the final product was not as satisfying as a live performance. For this reason, I stepped away from the split-screen video performance and decided to use animation for the project.
The World Ensemble happened under the umbrella of the Twisted Spruce Music Foundation, an organization that focuses on the production of new music with meaningful collaborations between composers and performers. With this in mind, I thought the premiere of a new composition, that was then set to animation, and involved people from all five continents, was the right kind of project. I wanted to create an inclusive project where people from all around the world, who are in different career stages, and whose only thing in common was playing guitar, could participate. So, I did.
PJ: How have you stayed innovative and inspired during this pandemic?
NF: Staying busy during the pandemic was a combination of holding true to my values as a traditional music practitioner, while imagining a new way to reach out and make music in a modern world—with the use of technology. During the pandemic I worked outside in my garden, I fixed my deck, I took time to reflect on what music is and what music could be. I worked with an outstanding board of directors to co-design an online symposium that pairs classical guitarists with composers from around the world. Our pilot program drew 18 very diverse students with geographic locations representing the United States, England, Canada, and Thailand. The pairing of composers and guitarists who worked collaboratively to create a new work was an astounding success. We will build on this momentum for 2021 and add guitar and chamber music to our competition and education curriculum. Ultimately, during the pandemic, I worked to build the Twisted Spruce Music Foundation and the World Ensemble—a first-of-its-kind organization and ensemble that have a unique and powerful mission to build a new future, new audience, and new repertoire for the classical guitar.
The audio for Parts, Together was released by Frameworks Records, and the score will be available soon through Azahar Press.
For more:
- Visit the Twisted Spruce website: TwistedSpruce.org
- The Twisted Spruce Music Foundation, and World Ensemble ask that you consider contributing to their 2020 campaign so that they can strengthen the impact they are pursuing—to make music as a global community and advance guitar education in a new and innovative ways: https://charity.gofundme.com/twistedsprucemusicfoundationinc
Grace Leckey and Anna Fagin: Bonnets
The IU Theatre Department’s production this past semester of Bonnets: (How Ladies of Good Breeding Are Induced to Murder) would not have been possible without Anna Fagin (BS, Audio Engineering and Sound Production) and Grace Leckey (BS, Audio Engineering and Sound Production). But when they signed on, Grace as music director/sound designer and Anna as assistant record engineer/sound designer, they had no idea that the upcoming pandemic would force them to change all their plans. Bonnets… became a completely digital, livestreamed performance, with actors performing together over Zoom from their homes. Anna and Grace share more about the rollercoaster process.
AF: Bonnets was originally pitched to us in March, and it was going to be a normal play, in a theater with an audience, and obviously things didn’t work out that way. It became us working on a software that streamed the performance onto YouTube. There were four scenes that were prerecorded, and Grace and I worked together on the prerecorded music [for those scenes].
GL: [The main musical number was] the song “Chop Chop,” which we recorded in the Joshi studio with musicians from Jacobs. They all happen to be audio engineers as well, and all women, too, which was all very much on purpose. The sheet music and the song exists as part of the script, and it’s a song by Max Vernon that’s meant to be a part of the show and done in some fashion. So when you get the rights to use the script, they provide backing tracks for it if you wanted to use those. But we thought those were kind of uncool, and the song was written by a guy, and we wanted to put our own spin on it. So we added violin parts, and synth parts, and all kinds of other stuff. Piano—you know, the beautiful piano in Joshi—we used that; it was just an awesome sound to throw on it.
So that’s how we recorded the instrumental for “Chop Chop.” And then Anna and I worked together to record all of the vocals for the cast, which was a really long marathon process. We did that in 405, which is the other studio that’s upstairs in the MAC, the smaller, cozy one. So we had to bring in the actors one at a time, obviously, and then allot for at least 30 minutes between each session to clean everything and air out the room and all that stuff. So it took a really long time to accomplish, and it took a ton of planning.
AF: Like Grace said, it was a weekend of a revolving door of people coming into the studio. Grace did a great job and came in with an idea of what she wanted to hear all the actors sing on in the parts, which helped a lot, and then we sort of functioned as a producer/engineer, as Grace was talking to the actors about notes for the next take, or what else she wanted to hear them on. I was running the ProTools computer and running the session, and it just ended up working out pretty well, and by the sixth actor, I felt like we had a pretty good system. But it was super unconventional, because if things were how we wished they would be, we could have everyone in there at once and perform all together. But it ended up sounding cool and Grace actually did most of the mix on it, and one of the things I loved about it was it really sounded like they were coming in from different directions, and it was communicative, especially with the visual. That was another prerecorded element—the visual to “Chop Chop”—and that totally sold it, that they were all together and singing, and it looked pretty good. I was really proud of how that turned out.
PJ: Before you knew that you would have to record everything due to pandemic restrictions, were you planning to record just backing tracks for the live, in-person performance?
AF: We were going to have a band! The band was going to be a part of the show; they were going to be on a little tiny stage and playing live around the actors, which was going to be so sick. There was talk for a little bit if we were going to do the show in-person and outside in the Amphitheatre, and that would have been great, but eventually we were all so nervous that campus was going to get shut down. We were also nervous that we wouldn’t even be able to record anything, if campus got shut down. We had to have all these backup plans for every different scenario, and it took shape in such an odd way.
GL: Infinite backup plans.
AF: We just had all these plans. We were like, okay, plan A, we do this, plan B we do this. We knew that the actors were getting microphones to use during the show, so worst-case scenario was going to be just the actors recording themselves. And we actually had to do that a few times, because there were two actors that weren’t even in Bloomington, so they had to record themselves from home using those microphones. So we could have done that with the whole cast, but it wouldn’t have been as good.
GL: The USB mics, they’re really meant for speech and dialogue, so they were okay for the dialogue, but they’re not really meant for singing, so we had to really finesse those tracks.
PJ: What was the experience like being innovative during a pandemic, or trying to work around all the restrictions? How did you try to remain inspired, creative, with all this new stuff being piled on top of you?
AF: There were a few times where I just wanted to throw in the towel and be like, let’s just wait, let’s do this when we can do it justice, when we can do it right. And there were a few times when it was hard, and things felt overwhelming. But one time my friend was like, “You know, you’re probably one of the first people who’s ever done this.” People have done stuff like this, but never under these circumstances, and never under these restrictions, and I was like, okay, that’s sort of uplifting, to know that theater can be done this way, and that it can still have the same impact and be a product that we’re proud of. But it was not easy, and there were a lot of things that we had to [overcome]. But it was still theater, and we gathered and got to watch something cool, and that’s what matters.
GL: I think it was a really exhausting process. It was also very rewarding in the end. I think when I watch the end product, and I try to watch it from an outside perspective, the choices we wound up with seem really weird, you know? There’s a lot about it that seems, “Why that?” And I tell myself, “Well, it’s because we had to adapt every single plan. We started with a plan A, and then plan B is a small adaptation of that, and then as we learned more, it was real-time researching how this technology with [the livestreaming software] vMix is going to work, how much time we can have in the studio, how much access we can have to the actors and to gear and to whatever. So when you think about it and you know the process behind the whole thing, it’s really fascinating, and I think the end product is almost like a time capsule of what I spent 6 months or however long it was, trying to figure out how to do. And so, while the end product isn’t like the most polished, beautiful in every way, technically perfect show—some of the dialogue is really crunchy, some of the timing didn’t work out—it’s still a good exercise in making compromises and still being able to come out on the other side with something that the world needed, something that was really important, something that I needed. So compromises were made, and the final thing was kind of weird, but in a wildly beautiful way.
PJ: Is there anything that you learned during this process that you would want to keep doing in the future in your professional life?
AF: I feel like I wouldn’t work under this workflow by choice, but to know that I can, and to know that you just need some will and some good planning, and some thoughts, is nice. And I’m so thankful that I got to work with Grace!
GL: I was just about to say, “And a good partner!” Thanks, Anna, couldn’t have done it without you. I think one of my things that I did take with me, which was kind of part of the crazy weirdness of it—we did this pre-show/post-show music as well. We recorded it in my living room, which was plan J or whatever, and we got some really decent sounds out of it and got really great practice in live-style recordings. I feel like I learned a lot from that, and if it ever were to come up again, I now have lots of experience building impromptu recording systems. I’m going to do something kind of similar for Little Women in the spring, based on this system that I built in my living room with the help of Anna, and Macy Kloville, and my roommate Kellie.
A big shout-out to all the Jacobs musicians and audio engineers who lent their talents to Bonnets: Grace Leckey (piano, synthesizer, vocals, producer); Kellie McGrew (drums and drum programming); Maya Toffler (bass and violin); Alona Meek (electric guitar); Emma Walsh (electric guitar, ukulele, vocals); Abby Harrison (head record and mix engineer); Anna Fagin (assistant record engineer); and Olivia Lawson (assistant record engineer).
Thank you to everyone who spoke to us for these interviews, and for the inspirational work you’ve been doing! Stay tuned for Part 2 next Friday!
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