A living room, an office, a bedroom — these are not places you typically picture when you think of orchestra musicians playing instruments.
But that’s just what a group of musicians with the Calgary Philharmonic and Edmonton Symphony orchestras did to bring a beautiful musical piece to audiences self-isolating during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the virtual performance, musicians — in isolation themselves — are seen standing in front of beds, bookshelves and living rooms as they collectively, but independently, perform Elgar’s Nimrod Variation IX from the Enigma Variations. “The piece — it feels like something that starts out very sad and then it transitions to something hopeful and something mighty,” Calgary Philharmonic violinist Donovan