Music organizations across the country are currently faced with financial challenges and this moment marks a decisive turning point regarding how organizations will treat artists. National YoungArts Foundation (YoungArts) in Miami is an organization which identifies the most accomplished young artists in the visual, literary and performing arts, and provides them with creative and professional development opportunities throughout their careers. YoungArts, a founding member of the national Artist Relief coalition, launched YoungArts Alumni Emergency Microgrants and are paying alumni to perform livestream concerts on their Facebook page. Topics in this article include how to utilize the strengths of your organization and the creative opportunities and financial issues with livestream concerts. As these issues are nuanced and ongoing, Classical Post felt that it would be beneficial to speak with three sides of YoungArts to get a full picture of how organizations can support artists. This article features the perspectives of YoungArts Chief Operating Officer Jewel Malone, YoungArts Board Chair Sarah Arison, and composer/pianist Conrad Tao. Tao is a YoungArts alumnus and will perform a livestream concert and give a talk on the YoungArts website and Facebook page on May 7 at 7pm.

Jewel Malone, YoungArts Chief Operating Officer 

Many non-profit organizations are nimble and able to meet the community’s needs as they change and evolve. The Artist Relief coalition is made up of organizations that have found ways to serve artists and find solutions during this unprecedented time. Even when organizations like YoungArts are able to pivot and serve artists, there are still organizational challenges. “Some of the challenges we faced were: ability to scale up; anticipating the volume of need; and simplifying what is often a rigorous grant application process while also ensuring we are getting the information required to fund those most in need,” says Jewel Malone. “As a founding Artist Relief coalition member, YoungArts took our responsibility humbly and seriously, working to address accountability and integrity. We all knew we needed to build a system that works and would not add additional burden to a population already hurting.”

A key for organizational success is utilizing strengths. One of the most technically challenging aspects of setting up a national relief fund was creating an application system and process. YoungArts already had a skilled team in place with the knowledge of how to create this - for the past 40 years they’ve identified accomplished artists across the nation through an application-based system. 

In addition to their skilled administrative team, YoungArts utilized their community. “Whether large or small, organizations can leverage their strengths. For YoungArts, it was using our most important asset—our community—to reach out and listen to the needs of artists and of our collaborators so we could act on them, advocate and find various resources to add to the list of possible solutions,” says Malone. She also encourages organizations to use their social media platforms to share artists stories and encourage audience members to donate to efforts such as Artist Relief.

Large arts organizations are interdependent on their executive officers, board members, and their artists to function. Artists are a critical part of the picture. “If there is one thing this pandemic has taught us, it is to go back to basics and look at what matters most – taking care of each other. We are all in this together, and those who are able to galvanize and support communities should step up and do what they can,” says Malone. “Relief efforts for the art and culture sector are critical to the survival of the field and they should be thought of as long-term. The ability to recover from this crisis will take much longer than we all want.”

Sarah Arison, Board Chair, National YoungArts Foundation

Time is of the essence for artists needing financial support due to COVID-19. Artist Relief has already issued their first cycle of grants. “In its first cycle, Artist Relief funded 200 artists with $5,000 unrestricted grants. Grants will continue to be distributed in monthly cycles through September 2020,” says Sarah Arison. “The fund opened with $10 million, consisting of $5 million in seed funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation matched with $5 million in initial contributions from an array of foundations across the country. Since launch, Artist Relief has raised an additional $1.1 million from various partnerships and online, individual contributions.” 

Even in their success, there is still the issue of the sheer number of artists in need of relief. “Due to the magnitude of this crisis, we anticipate more requests for funding than there are funds to distribute,” says Arison. 

One way that YoungArts has supported their alumni is by paying them to perform livestream concerts on the YoungArts facebook page. When asked about streaming culture at large, Arison says, “There are concerns with livestream culture. Beyond the undoubtable difference in experience for both the audience and the artists—you can’t feel the energy in the room, experience small nuances from the artist; and viewers’ attention can easily be pulled by environmental factors — I worry that watching for free might make audiences feel like they don't need to be fully engaged or that what they're watching isn't valuable.” 

If one compares a livestream concert to a live performance, livestream concerts feel like a bandaid on a serious wound. “In these times, I'm so grateful that we have the capability to livestream as it's definitely better than nothing,” says Arison. “However, I do hope that soon we're able to get back to a place where our artists can engage with audiences in a venue that ensures the audience is present and that gives the artist the respect and attention that they deserve.”

Conrad Tao, Pianist, YoungArts Alumnus 

Conrad Tao has appeared worldwide as a pianist and composer, and has been dubbed a musician of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision” by The New York Times. Tao is a recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, and was named a Gilmore Young Artist—an honor awarded every two years highlighting the most promising American pianists of the new generation.

Tao views the livestream concert experience as a unique medium, and is interested in the vulnerability required of musicians when performing in their homes. “For me, there’s an intimate, homemade quality to livestreams that I’m interested in, between the spotty Internet connections, gaps of dead air, and odd camera angles,” says Tao. “When livestreaming, I don’t know how many people are listening or where they are listening from, and I don’t know if people have my stream open in another tab while they do something else, or if they’re listening while cooking or washing the dishes, or if they’re just popping in and out. It’s quite humbling.”

A key concept here is the idea of the livestream performance being inherently different from traditional concerts, and they therefore open up creative doors to artists like Tao. “What can I do with a livestream that I can’t do in a recital? Here the visual dimension of the medium stands out: I can consider each part of the performance as a different expressive tableau: livestream as canvas, opening up new lanes of phrasing,” says Tao. “I want live shows to come back, but I don’t necessarily want them to come back exactly the same as they were. So there’s an undercurrent of larger-scale, explorative strategizing too.”

The May 7 performance will be Tao’s fourth livestream and the first one where he will incorporate electronics. The concert will likely feature improvisation and music by Todd Moellenberg, Dan Thorpe, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Federico Mompou, and Brahms. 

Improvisation has been a grounding part of Tao’s musical practice in recent weeks. “Improvisation demands that one listen intently to their environment; it hinges on attentiveness and honesty in the moment. This has been extremely helpful in this situation, in which time feels so warped. I’ve been listening to everything: the drip of my leaky ceiling; the tone of running water hitting a drain, so faint I always wonder if I'm imagining it; the rustling of a low-density polyethylene plastic bag. It keeps me in my body and in my life,” says Tao. “For the May 7th show, I’ve been trying to create electroacoustic environments that activate the air around me, that make the room itself a live, unpredictable improvisation partner: true “chamber” music.”

Out of the five livestream concerts that Tao has done, this is only the second one that is paying him a fee. Out of the other three, one was done for Venmo tips and two were fundraisers. “If livestreaming is going to be a big performance medium for the foreseeable future, I would like to move forward exploring and proposing structural models that are more fair  to artists than what we’ve currently been seeing, with artists participating in, say, star-studded galas without pay,” says Tao. “Otherwise we give too much credence to the notion of performing "for exposure,” or worse, performing to prop up institutions that have, through their actions, indicated that they see performers as disposable.”