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It doesn’t take a Leonardo-level intellect to figure out that the pandemic has been devastating for the arts economy. Live events were the first things to stop, and they will be the last to return. That means musicians, actors, and dancers, plus all the people who enable them to take the stage playwrights and choreographers, directors and conductors, lighting designers and makeup artists, roadies, ushers, ticket takers, theater managers have no way to make a living from their work, and haven’t for more than a year.
Still, I don’t think most of us appreciate just how bad things are. The crisis goes well beyond the performing arts. Surveys published last summer found that 90 percent of independent music venues were in danger of closing for good, but so were a third of museums. In a survey by the Music Workers Alliance, 71 percent of musicians and DJs reported a loss of income of at least 75 percent, and in another, by the Authors Guild, 60
Colm O’Herlihy: The Corkman making waves in Iceland s cool music scene
The small Nordic nation has long been punching above its weight on the international music scene, and now has an Irish man helping to get further recognition for its home-grown acts
Colm O Herlihy and his business parter, Icelandic composer Atli Orvarsson. Picture: Juliette Rowland
Thu, 04 Feb, 2021 - 16:45
Mike McGrath Bryan
On a Zoom call from Reykjavik, Colm O’Herlihy shares stories from the trenches of late-2000s Cork music. Having done his time playing in indie bands, working as a session performer, managing labels, and booking tours for the like of Chelsea Crowell and alt-rock legend Grant Hart, opportunity came the Corkman s way by a chance meeting while on the road at a festival.
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David Byrne once wrote that music’s evolution is shaped by the spaces it occupies, filling rooms and halls the way water takes the shape of its vessel. Artists, he observed, “work backward, either consciously or unconsciously, creating work that fits the venue available to us.” And what if no venues were available? He doesn’t say, because before the horrible, terrible, never-to-be-forgotten year of 2020, it would have seemed like a preposterous thought.
The shutdown of performances in America has devastated the music business, threatened its infrastructure long-term, and unnerved its professionals across all sectors. The crisis began in March, when the scale and severity of the global Covid-19 pandemic became clear. In a vertigo-inducing week, the entire live entertainment industry - from megatours to Broadway to coffee houses - went dark. The fate of mid-sized independent venues is particuarly precarious, because they represent the rungs on the ladder every artist must