Today, right now, if I were so inclined, I could listen to whatever music I wanted. A tap, a click, or a word is all it would take to summon a professional, ultra-polished version of almost anything I could dream of hearing.
(Admittedly that ease of access sometimes falls on its face, as when my daughter asked a certain digital assistant for a Bluey mix and received a pungent blast of Ricky Martin).
If we can hear (almost) anything we want, anytime we want, why bother continuing to schlep out to see and hear music live? Why should we show up to watch fallible humans when we could stay home and listen to the very best of what we can record, stitch together, and edit? To say nothing of the specter of musical AI?
It’s a question I periodically return to as a somewhat conflicted performer and an extremely conflicted audience member. Live performance is not restful. Live listening isn’t restful either. Both are intrinsically, and sometimes dramatically, imperfect. And neither has any guarantee of being pleasurable.
So what on earth are we all still doing here?
We come to live performance, of course, for many reasons. Some of us enjoy the adrenaline rush, the experience of risking, or watching someone risk, failure. Others value the ritual,, the feeling of entering into a period of time that is set apart from the normal flow. Still more of us enjoy the social element, the feeling of being one with a performing group or a crowd. But none of these reasons quite captures it for me.
Confession time: As a professional musician (and, for many years, a paid music critic), I often find attending professional concerts to be onerous. (Interestingly, I don’t have this reaction to concerts of amateur music-making, which I nearly always find restorative.)
Why? It’s nearly impossible to turn off an unrelenting analysis and assessment of what’s occurring onstage. And if the music isn’t being shaped the way that I feel, deep in my bones, it could or should be, it’s hard to hear.
Throw in a deep and informed empathy for the performers and the occasional sprinkling of envy (why wasn’t I hired for this?), and going to concerts is a slog. Although I’m mildly ashamed to admit it, I’d prefer to attend a play or a gallery opening –really any art event about which I lack expertise– so I can enjoy myself in blissful ignorance.
And yet.
I can count them on the fingers of one hand every year, but there are moments, sitting in the audience, when I hear and see something so raw and pure and good it feels almost like a flaying. For a few seconds, everything peels away and the performers and I stand shoulder to shoulder to shoulder in awe.
Here’s the secret: the best musicians are witnesses. They are producing the music, yes, but they are simultaneously listening deeply to it, wondering at it, rejoicing in it, pointing it out. See, they are saying. Hear. Here, look.
It’s transfiguring. And it’s worth it.
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