ONLINE CONCERTS

Even with live concerts starting up again, I still get requests to continue with Karl’s Online Concerts. I am planning on doing another series, but haven’t settled on a date yet. I have been busy recording things with friends (chamber music this time), and am planning on asking a few other people if they’d like to participate with their own material. If you have requests – now’s a good time to make them (karlstobbe@karlstobbe.com)!! Otherwise, stay tuned, and hopefully we can have an online reunion in the near future!!

The Bach Celebration concerts that I held in 2020 and 2021 were a whole lot of fun, and I enjoyed everything about them – recording them and presenting them to friends was such a treat. Of course, the music is extraordinary!! I’m in the process of turning them into audio recordings that will be available for online purchase, and I’ll post updates on that as things move along. I am considering also making the videos available, but that has yet to be confirmed. For those of you who’d like to browse through the Bach celebration trailers, I’m leaving them up below as a little bit of memorabilia from those concerts.

I don’t think too many people would disagree that, at least on a global scale, 2020 will prove to be one of the most unnerving years of our generation. For those of us in the performing arts industry, by May 2020 we knew that concerts, festivals, and income was going to get very thin. I usually play 130ish concerts every year. I think that in 2020 I will end up having played about 25 live concerts – almost all of those before March.

Trying to make the best of things, I decided that I had the time to invest in another musical project – playing through all of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas every week for a year, in recognition of their 300 th birthday. Covid took many things from me during 2020, but getting to play Bach every day was a gift that I will treasure forever.

Early in this endeavour I started experimenting with a few live recordings that I posted on YouTube. I didn’t own any equipment other than an iPhone, so as I got more serious I borrowed some. Eventually I realized that making a proper video recording of them might be valuable to have, so I bought some real microphones (Telefunken M61) and started recording. I learned how to use Reaper (audio software), started experimenting with cameras, and learned how to use DaVinci (video software). With the help of my fantastic sound engineer, Joe Dudych, the sound recording wasn’t too difficult. But the video part was a very steep learning curve.

After finishing a couple of the video recordings, I decided to incorporate other art into a few of the videos. Some of that is still a work in progress, but there are already a few videos that incorporate visual artwork by Manitoba artist Margruite Krahn. You can see some of these on my media page. I really love the addition of the visual art, and look forward to doing more of them as time goes on.

Towards the end of recording I started thinking about presenting these recordings as an online concert series over the winter holidays. To make a long story short, it worked out really well. Zoom is not a particularly good way of doing a live broadcast, but it works pretty well for pre- recorded music, and as a forum for talking to an audience and engaging with them in conversation before and after, it’s an excellent tool.

Putting these together has been a ton of effort from me and others. Thankfully, I’m really happy with the way these have turned out, and it’s exciting for me to be able to share my passion for Bach, and my passion for the violin with you in this format. I hope you’re able to come, and I look forward to meeting you online soon!

Karl Stobbe