![]() By the time later April rolled around, it was all becoming a good bit ordinary. My wife Meghan and I got through the first few weeks, we organized trips to open fields to play with the boys, we kept track of our spending, and we watched far too many news programs. Orchestras and opera companies were cancelling, some were paying 25%, thankfully everyone was rescheduling. ![]() I was talking with my agents in Vienna, Copenhagen and Paris, all of whom were very helpful and supportive. No music making, no conducting, not much income, I was simply at home, our little American family in Berlin. The biggest change for me was that suddenly I was at home with my wife and our two young boys all the time, literally 24/7. ![]() This was all part of the lockdown’s new normal. First times wearing a mask in the grocery store, red lettering on the floor suggesting to keep distance, “Abstand 1.5 meter”, stocking up on every variety of pasta, and six week wait times for a box of blue masks from Amazon. On March 16th of 2020, my upcoming ten performances at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm were cancelled and I flew home to Berlin and began the long campaign to beat the pandemic with the rest of Germany. How the Coronavirus lockdown led to Bernstein’s “Songfest”Īs an American conductor living and working in Europe, the 2020 Coronavirus lockdown provided me with an extraordinary amount of time for research, study and reflection. ![]()
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