I am Debra Chandler, and I have the privilege of working with a wide range of professional musicians who perform under the banner of Concerts in Care Ontario for our aging population in long-term and memory care (LTCs), assisted and independent living facilities. We perform in more than 115 facilities in Ottawa, Pembroke, Sudbury, Windsor, London, and the GTA. 

As a result of COVID-19, we can no longer perform the remaining 300+ in-person concerts inside these seniors' facilities, and the research we had planned with Kate Dupuis of the Sheridan Centre for Aging, has been deferred. We also had a pilot series of concert-lectures ready to go for the Resident Doctors at McMaster University.

It will likely be 2021 before we can even contemplate returning to inside concerts in LTCs, but we suspect retirement/independent living homes will open in the fall. We will be there as soon as safety allows. And the research will follow. AND, once McMaster is up and running, we will run there, too!

In the meanwhile, the isolation and health situations compel us to help in any way we can. We have, with our colleagues in BC, Alberta, and Quebec, started production of a series of 30-minute video concerts called "From Our Home to Your Home." This is an opportunity to ensure music for the seniors, and some decent work for the musicians. They are recorded in an up-close and personal frame with the artists addressing their audiences through the camera in a manner that makes the listeners feel as though they are in the same room with the performers, just like in-person Concerts in Care performances!

People reading this interested in finding us can stay in touch with what we are doing and planning by visiting www.concertsincareontario.com, or by contacting me by email at debra@concertsincareontario.com

John: Patti and I have hosted jazz and cabaret concerts here at our house for several years. Patti plays piano, I on trumpet. We are very appreciative of an extremely loyal following, and love our fellow musicians dearly. We miss them.

Things we had planned we have had to let go of completely since COVID-19 hit? Pretty much all of it.  We’re optimistic that things will eventually return, but it’s going to take a long while. We have about 40 paying customers every six weeks or so. Even if restrictions were “lifted” it’s doubtful that we, or our guests, would have the confidence to sit together in a confined space, right now. Challenging.

Once circumstances allow we will resume with all of it, to whatever extent is practical. 

Meanwhile? Waiting. Practising.  You can stay in touch with what we are doing and planning at https://jazzinthekitchen.ca

Patti: Further to John’s response, we had to postpone – let’s not say “cancel”! – Mike Murley’s CD release for “Taking Flight with Special Guest Renee Rosnes” at a “Jazz in the Kitchen” here which was to have been May 10th. That evening would have featured Mike Murley, Reg Schwager, Renee Rosnes, and Steve Wallace. You can imagine, there was some long range planning involved in setting that up. It really hurt to postpone it. Right now, this all kind of feels like jazz: we’re improvising…

I am director of audience engagement for the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony. 

We provide professional orchestral concerts, education programming, and community outreach to Waterloo Region and beyond. Unfortunately the remainder of the 2019/20 Season had to be cancelled. Our concert season runs from September through May.

If circumstances allow we hope to be back in the concert hall to begin on our 2020/21 Season in September! We also hope to be able to program some of the cancelled concerts in future seasons.

Meanwhile we’ve launched “Friday Night at the KWS”: free, online broadcasts of KWS concerts from the archives, some with video and some that are audio only. Each broadcast will feature a video introduction and a live chat with musicians throughout. 

Work is also continuing as normal for the beginning of the 2020/21 season in September.  People reading this can stay in touch with what we are doing and planning via our website (kwsymphony.ca) and social channels: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.

I am a Canadian violinist and composer, a Master’s of Music student at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and a recent graduate of The Glenn Gould School in Toronto. I am also the founder & director of the Suite Melody Care volunteer program.

Of all the things I had planned when COVID-19 hit,I have had to completely let go of orchestra and chamber music playing. I was studying at Rice in Houston when COVID-19 rapidly escalated and I had to return back home to Oakville, Canada. Though my academic classes and private lessons continued online for the rest of the semester, orchestra and chamber music were cancelled completely and similarly summer plans for orchestra/chamber music festivals in the U.S. and Germany have been rescheduled. I really miss the unique experience of making music together with my colleagues and, for now, I am enjoying the alternative of making recordings and syncing these together with friends.

I also run a volunteer program called Suite Melody Care (founded in 2012) which encourages young musicians and singers to give back to the community by performing in their local hospitals, retirement residences, and long-term care facilities. We give over 100 live themed, interactive performances annually for hospital patients and the elderly across Ontario, Iowa, and just recently in Houston. Unfortunately, all of these live performances have had to stop for the time being to protect our audience members and performers.

Once circumstances turn for the better, I look forward to resuming orchestra and chamber music studying, rehearsals, and performances. I will also be particularly excited for Suite Melody Care performances to continue and grow to involve many more young musicians and reach even more audience members in hospitals, retirement residences, and long-term care facilities across Canada and in the U.S.

In the meanwhile, in order to bring some happiness into the lives of hospital patients and the elderly during these challenging times, Suite Melody Care has launched a Virtual Performance video series for hospital patients and the elderly in Canada and the United States to raise their spirits. They can view these virtual performances from the safety and comfort of their own rooms and with their own personal devices.

I created the first of these videos to inspire others who will be submitting videos to me which I will be combining and sharing. We have just published the first results, “Spring Together”, a Suite Melody Care COVID Virtual Performance, on our YouTube Channel.

Suite Melody Care Inaugural COVID Virtual Performance links: Suite Melody Care Virtual Performance; "Spring Together"; Suite Melody Care website: www.suitemelodycare.com

For any musician, singer, or dancer interested in bringing some joy into the elderly and hospital patients’ lives, I would welcome you to contact me and find out how you can take part in the Suite Melody Care Virtual Performance videos. My email address is ashworthproductions@gmail.com.

NDN seeks to establish a bi-annual touring project that will allow Northern Ontarians to access world-class, professional, classical music performances and encounters in their own backyard, working closely with local arts councils and community presenters.

We were heartbroken to have to postpone our final concert of our inaugural season by the Drive Shaft Trio that would’ve included our very first commissioned piece by local Sudbury composer, Robert Lemay.

We hope to reschedule the concert to the early fall or at least to organize a digital solution to seeing the concert through.

We’re a small organization just starting out on our artistic and creative journey. We had hoped to present the concert online instead of in person but it became almost impossible logistically to make happen. We want to honour the music we have commissioned and premiering the work online, without the trio being able to properly rehearse together seems contrary to that spirit. So we have concentrated on making optimistic plans for our 2020/21 season and rolling the postponed concert into those efforts.

Sudbury, ON, is our home base of operations and where we plan our main concerts of our series and fundraising events. We are building our network of contacts around Northern Ontario for touring concerts in future seasons. Next season will see the first of our regional runout concerts attached to our main Sudbury season. We would love for any Northern Ontarians interested in interested in bringing top-level classical music and musicians to their communities to contact us at  info@northerndebutnord.com,  to visit our website at NorthernDebutNord.com, and to sign up for our newsletter to be included in our season launch announcements and kept up to date with our activities. That, and following us on social media including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.