Concert Violinist Andrii Isakov shares his thoughts on 2020

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

The pandemic has lasted already almost a year. It is an obvious fact that many musicians have been suffering not only because there is almost no real communication between artists and the audience (I don’t count online as a real connection between those two), but also financially. It is a very sad, but an obvious fact.

From a student point of view, I have to say that I don’t think it has ever been easy for students to support themselves even before the pandemic. The pandemic made it even worse. Speaking of myself, the amount of gigs I have had since the start of the pandemic has been close to zero. The gigs I was assigned to play were either cancelled or postponed until unknown times in the future.

I am able to pay my rent and make a living only because of my teaching. I think it is a good way for students to keep surviving. It might be not enough for more than rent and food, but at least it is something. Because there is not any sureness as to what will happen in the future, I just try to keep going, keep improving, finding competitions, and making many recordings (since performing is a luxury nowadays).

Some of the competitions I got in are postponed until far from now, however, we should not give up even though it is very easy to do so during such a time as this. However, we should fight even harder to keep improving and use this time for something that we might not be able to do during our normal super-busy musician lives.

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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.”