It would be easy to talk about all the canceled engagements/projects, loss of income, but I won’t.
I quickly realized around May of 2020 that this crisis would last longer than I originally anticipated. Throughout the last 10 months I have had moments of extreme happiness and extreme lows. I miss making music with amazing colleagues and feeling the energy of the audience at my back.
I had an epiphany that this is a “free year.” I can focus and do things that I never thought I had the time for. I just finished a screen play, I wrote and directed my first artistic short video which has gone on to ten festival selections and was picked up by PBS, airing in February. I’ve been able to go back to practicing piano properly. I learned Mozart’s Piano Concerto # 9 as well as Bach’s keyboard concerto in d minor. I did a few concerts (socially distanced) for LA Opera.
But more importantly than all of this, I’ve been able to focus on the person I am and want to be, the father I want to be, the life, when this is all over, that I want to return to. I miss the audience but in the best of worlds, they will return to the concert hall changed for the better.
For the time being, I’m happy to be a bit patient.
Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”
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