‘The game is on!’ Eventness at a distance at a livestream concert during lockdown

Abstract

In many countries the lockdown measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic forbade social gatherings, including for performing arts. Numerous artists developed projects, often attempting to reach audiences in cyberspace. We offer an ethnographic study of such a project: a jazz concert played live for a particular audience, who attended it from home. We seek to understand how musicians, audience, and the material setting made it possible to engage with music in a way that gave these moments a particular density. What made this experience meaningful, we argue, was the eventness of the performance: the ‘game was on’, happening in the moment, in the unpredictable, risky interactions between musicians, and with the ‘push of the audience’ listening to the gig in real time. The eventness of this online concert was created in such a way it made possible a collective engagement with and through live music, notwithstanding the physical distance.

In every country where a lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic has taken place, one of the consequences was that people could not gather anymore, or could do so in a very limited way only. For months, everyday routines, and for some people work activities, have remained confined within the walls of their homes, with no possibilities to attend collective social events physically. It is hard to specify all that is lost when gatherings are not permitted anymore. At the same time, in coping with the absence of public gatherings and physical presence, the recourse to digital means has extended enormously and invaded many aspects of daily life, such as remote working, home delivery shopping, online classrooms, and tele-health, to name but a few. This raises important concerns about the kinds of sociability and activities that set in with a screen- and web-mediated way of life. ¹ The question how online connections between people may craft forms of sociality becomes even more crucial in the light of the social impacts of the lockdown.

In many countries the lockdown has affected the performing arts and their presence in people’s lives in important ways. Theaters have had to shut down, artists could not perform, audiences were split up and put at a distance, both from performers and from one another. In the Netherlands and Belgium, where we speak from, the lockdown also revealed the lack of support from governments for the artistic and cultural sectors. The crisis had an amplifying effect on the precarious living situations of artists, who in response claimed recognition of the significance of art and cultural life. The debates weren’t only critical; they also prompted artists to develop online projects, so that they could reconnect to an audience in cyberspace.

In this article we investigate one such project in detail: a jazz concert played live and attended by an audience online. We analyze how the concert connected people at distance by highlighting its eventness. In his research about theatre and spectatorship, Sauter writes that the ‘eventness’ of a performance “stands for the here-and-now, for mutual interaction, for the uniqueness of the experience.” (2008: 16). In our case, however, the ‘here’ of the players and spectators was dispersed over many different places, that came together in cyberspace. The question that guides our quest is: how was the online concert staged socially and materially in order to generate eventness and social connection despites the distance? We will answer this question by detailing a description of the concert, thanks to questionnaires filled out by the audience, interviews with the players and organizer, and our examination of the practical and material conditions and staging of the concert. Eventness, we found, did not only occur because it was a one-time live experience, which implied a certain risk for both audience and musicians, but also thanks to the way it was staged and listened to at home. Also, live music prompted audience members to relate to one another through digital technologies. In these ways, the concert generated a form of sociality that connected people in times of loneliness and forced isolation that characterized the lockdowns during the pandemic (see also Jabłońska (2021); Swarbrick et al. (2021); Hansen et al. (2022)). The eventness of the concert contributed to the pleasure of its participants, making the lockdowns’ difficult living conditions more bearable. Lockdown measures target the saving of lives, yet offer few discussions on how to give room to the everyday experiences people find valuable, such as the socialization through hanging out, or the collective enjoyment of an artwork (Pols, 2020; De Vries et al., 2022). Here, in a collective and situated manner, musicians and audience forged a relational mode to experience the gig as an alternative to the concert hall and online recordings.

A live online concert

The gig took place in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on the evening of 28 May 2020, at the end of a period of lockdown that lasted 12 weeks. It was performed by a duo, a pianist, Philipp Rüttgers, and a violinist, Oene van Geel, who played their compositions and improvisations very beautifully for about 1 hour. The gig was the third of a series called ‘The Lockdown Sessions’, organized by Henk Kraaijeveld, a jazz singer, together with other music professionals. One of them owned the studio from which the gig was broadcasted. As the organizer specified to us in the interviews, it was important to play the music “live”. While other cultural contents that are available through digital means are recorded and can be watched many times by “viewers”, this musical event was live, which created a special encounter for both artists and audience.

To receive a YouTube link leading to the live session, the audience had to book a ticket by paying between 8 and 20€ online. ² The ticket and booking were particularly important. It was a positioning in a debate that arose within the musician community in the Netherlands, in reaction to the many players who posted videos on the web, offering artistic performances to mass audiences for free. The booking was important, too, because the organizers wanted to create an “exclusivity” for the concert as a one-off performance. They assumed and hoped that, since audience participants had bought a ticket, they would make the time for the concert and give special attention to it, and this would prevent distracted listening or casual zapping.

Moreover, the concert would not be recorded to watch again. The organizer specified to us that it was important to play the music “live” because it would create a special situation for both artists and audience. The gig was to be shared in the moment or not at all. If the recording had been broadcasted, it would not be the same thing as the live concert anymore, but would join the ranks of recorded cultural contents that remain available online. The delayed broadcast of a show would attract yet different audiences and invite for different modes of listening. In our study none of the concert participants, whether players or listeners, had experienced such a setting before: an online live concert, that is simultaneously shared by a community of people located in different places.

Live but recorded

In our analysis of the online concert, we focus persistently on relations between people and (technological) things. The role of technologies is evident in the reproduction of music. Vinyl, CDs, videoclips, radio stations, and streaming services, all make music accessible to many and offer distinct listening conditions. Live concerts, by contrast, promise music that is produced on the spot and in the moment, with a certain dose of unpredictability, and a certain degree of risk. Brown and Knox (2017) asked music lovers why do they go to live concerts, despite the rising of ticket prices. Their respondents mentioned how much they value, above all, the “concert experience”, meaning the possibility to attend a unique, one-off experience, and to see how talented artists are playing in real-time, and “in the flesh”. In our case, the organizers hoped to recreate such a concert experience thanks to livestream technologies that would allow for real-time audiovisual attendance.

Indeed, as authors in the field of media studies attest, the live quality of music is not simply an opposite to recorded music. The idea of ‘live performance music’ did not exist before music was being recorded. It was only with the advent of the radio that the distinction between live and recorded came into being. In contrast to earlier gramophones, with radio broadcast, the source of sound became invisible. Hence it turned ambiguous to listeners whether a piece was live or recorded, and a distinction became necessary (Auslander, 2002). However, the magic of attending live performances in situ, including the technologies needed for that, never disappeared. The live character of a performance has been reshaped along with different mediatizations (Auslander, 2008). For instance, some musicians use playbacks with looping devices during real-time gigs (Baxter-Moore and Kitts, 2016). Also, fans of popular music use their smartphones, mobile internet and social media platforms to share videos with non-attendees, hence expanding the emotional experience created by live music to remote audiences (Bennett, 2012).

As for the live streaming of internet platforms and audience, their existence can be traced back to the 1990s (Bybyk, 2021). Their popularity increased in the 2010s, when live streaming became implemented in existing social media (like YouTube, Facebook or Twitter) or as the basic function of platforms, such as with those designed for video games (for example Twitch). Since 2020 and the lockdown times, the live streaming industry reports that the number of hours spent watching and interacting on livestream settings has been steadily growing (ibid.; Goh et al., 2021). Accounts of virtual engagement with live music during the pandemic have documented how they helped to sustain participants’ wellbeing and their sense of community, even if the technology fell short of their ideals, and even if it didn’t offer a long-term solution to social isolation either (MacDoncald et al., 2021; Morgan-Ellis, 2022; Jabłońska, 2021). ³ Swarbrick al. (2021) show that live concerts online create more feelings of social connectedness than recorded concerts. Sharing music that is performed and listened to live galvanized new experimentation with digital technologies. For instance, virtual singing prompted participants to innovate platforms that would best support their synchronous interactions (Morgan-Ellis, 2022).

Yet, authors also argued that the intense sociality that may occur when people conduct a ritual, that Durkheim (1965) designated as a ‘collective effervescence’, is arduous – if not impossible – to achieve without bodily co-presence (Liebst, 2019; Radbourne et al., 2014) or without the sensorial production of such a togetherness, even in its mild forms (Chau, 2008: 499). The ‘collective joy’ that Ehrenreich (2006) describes as occasions for an audience to let themselves go within the vibrancy of music in a crowd, could then hardly happen at lockdown times. Vandenberg and her colleagues (2021), for instance, report that viewers of a virtual rave were missing the in-person experience. Without being immersed in the rest of the audience dancing around them, participants’ engagement with music remained rather frustrating.

But strong absorption into a live show coupled with bodily movements is from far not the only way to enjoy it. Different genres and attention they request from the audience may better suit digital platforms than others. Sullivan (2020) conducted a survey among the audience of a Shakespeare play, staged at the Globe (London) and streamed live online. She learned that many spectators engaged in other activities while they watched, such as eating or ironing. Nevertheless, they reported that they were moved and challenged by the performance. Sullivan sees this as a ‘widening’ of audience experiences, beyond the strong absorption that became the ‘right’ form from the 19^th century on (Weber, 1997) and for later modern concert goers who listen intently to clear sounds in acoustically customized auditoria (Thompson, 2002).

Paying attention to events

In dissecting the online performance, we found that it succeeded to engage the musicians and audience through music and the special attention it gained from them. Our description foregrounds that our informants created conditions for the ‘eventness’ of the show to unfold, and to engross participants despites physical barriers. Sauter (2008) pointed to the live- character of performances to explain their eventness, as well as to the fact that the performance is unique, as it takes place here and now. Sauter also stresses the interactions between audience members to generate this effect. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘events’ are occurrences that stand out as particularly noteworthy. Events are not caused intentionally by a person, but they come into being as incidents or unusual happenings (OED, 2022). ⁴ In a concert, such event can take shape when players feel the ‘music flow’ between them, when listeners are moved or captivated by it or, more modestly, when they pay a closer attention to musicians, sounds, or movements. ⁵

In ‘our’ concert, the special attention given to the events of live music most likely relates, too, to its improvised character. As Hennion (2014: 174) notes, “Although a work needs to be performed in order to unfold itself, its performance can open it up more or less depending on the extent of its virtuosity or improvisation, by making the risk taking – the leap into the unknown that is a part of all realizations taking place in the here and now – an integral part of its own production.” Since improvisation techniques focusses the performance and attention to what happens on the moment, they increase its eventness (MacDonald et al., 2020). Eventness hence also incorporates an element of risk. Here, we want to learn how such eventness is made to occur at distance: how the performance of the musicians turned into a special moment with and within a remote audience, and how this was achieved with the help of technological means, such as communication devices, the staging in the studio, or the camera angles.

A situated study

We attended the concert together, as part of the novice online audience. The concert was also interesting to us because its staging happened at the crossroads of our respective research interests. Jeannette Pols studies how technologies and digital means are set up and used to provide care at a distance in healthcare practices supporting people with a chronic disease (Pols, 2012). More recently she has been studying aesthetics in everyday life and care (Pols, 2019). Ariane d’Hoop has worked as a stage designer and she has conducted ethnographic research on spectators’ experiences in relation to the spatial setting of the site where a performance took place (d’Hoop, 2010). In these different fields we have both focused on the practices and materialities that our informants engaged with. We are interested in what people do with the technologies and spaces, and what in turn these materialities make people do. This ethnographic attention to the relationships that develop between people and things is specific to our material semiotic approach. This analytical approach studies the ways in which people and things interact, and how this creates certain objects, subjects, or values in their practical relations (Law, 2004). ⁶ In line with this approach, we describe the many ‘mediations’ that give to music its specific presence, like instruments, languages, stage settings, performers’ and listeners’ bodies, media, etc. (Hennion, 2015). ⁷

Starting from our own experiences of the gig, we researched how the musicians and audience experienced it as well. To this end, we sent out written questionnaires, and received them back from thirteen spectators, among the fifty households that attended the gig. We invited our informants to revisit their experience of the performance, asked them how they had prepared for it, how they had watched it, with whom, in what setting, and what they found noteworthy and less successful moments. d’Hoop conducted online interviews with the players and the organizer and asked them similar questions on their preparations and experiences. We also analyzed the video recording of the concert (camera angles, sound, the use of the chat), and the Facebook page. We conducted this ‘digital fieldwork’ by using communication technologies, like Skype chats, emails, or YouTube, to reconstruct the concert experience with the multiple voices of musicians and audience participants. Could this virtual concert reproduce the ‘powerful ephemeral sense of connection’ (Baym, 2018), or the excitement of experiencing music together in the same way that on-site performances do? When did it work well, when did it fail? And how was it made different from on-site gigs, or from the many music clips or streaming available online?

Setting the stage, organizing attention

Obviously, an artistic experience does not begin when musicians and their instruments put each other in motion. Quite some preparation is needed, to reach and assemble the audience, as well as to set up the (on-line) conditions in which to listen and to pay attention. The arrangement of the ‘stage’ in the recording studio offered a possibility to enhance the connection with the audience, and to organize the way in which the audience members would experience the concert. The stage presented a cozy setting. The room was just big enough to host a grand piano together with a few other musicians and their instruments, with a place on the side for the technicians. The outside view was closed by a long curtain, the floor was covered with an Oriental carpet, and the back of the room was ornamented with bookshelves and a leather sofa. The whole setting was enveloped by warm, yellowish light. All of these details contributed to a cozy atmosphere, very different from concert venues. No space is left for an audience in here. ⁸ The studio with its homely atmosphere matched the location from which the audience was watching.

The technical arrangements suited this atmosphere of closeness. Importantly, as the violinist said, the arrangements had to avoid adding ‘extra layers’ between the players, and between them and the audience. With this he meant that he did not want to put technological paraphernalia in the image. He used a clip microphone. Because the musicians played by heart, there was no sheet music or music stands, allowing the view to be as open as possible. This open visibility was already a habit of the duo, as they often improvised together, so they had to be able to see each other. But with the transmission through video it became especially important; the presence of music sheets or of a standing microphone would have obstructed the line of sight for the audience.

A final detail in the setup of the stage that created closeness were the angles of the two cameras. One camera was placed next to the pianist, a bit behind him, in a way the audience could see him playing the keys in the foreground, with the violinist in the background (Figure 1). The second camera was located on the other side of the room. Here the violinist was at the front and the pianist in the background, also giving an overview of both musicians (Figure 2). These camera angles offered a much greater visual closeness than in concert halls, even closer than the large screens in arena concerts that allow the remote audience a simultaneous view of the performers. Here, with these static framings, there were no objects that would create ‘extra layers’, but also none that would remind the viewers that there was a recording going on. Such a setting attempted to better allow the audience to be captivated by the performance, to forget the staging and be drawn into the music. During the concert, the organizer, who is a jazz singer himself, shifted from one camera to the other according to what was happening (like switching if one player takes a solo). With these variations of views, he tried to support the dynamic between the players in the listeners’ perception. This set up created closeness at a distance; it enhanced the “eventness” of music by following the occurrences of playing thanks to the variations of camera angles.

Figure 1.

First camera angle. Courtesy of Oene Van Geel and Philipp Rüttgers.

Figure 2.

Second camera angle. Courtesy of Oene Van Geel and Philipp Rüttgers.

Dispositions for enjoying a concert at home

Setting up didn’t only happen in the studio. Several audience participants shared with us that, when attending concerts, going to a specific venue helps to tune oneself towards that experience. But the audience at home also arranged conditions for listening. Listening to (jazz) music at home often requires ‘dispositive gestures’, like closing a door, or sitting in a comfy armchair, to mediate how the music may better move listeners (Legrain, 2015). In the interviews, audience members described how they settled down with a beer, with a nice meal, a glass of wine, and candles. Fellow musicians in particular mentioned their excellent stereo devices, their high-quality speakers and the widest screen for the largest image. Since the sound was professionally streamed, it was of superior quality. The experience of listeners was dependent on the technical means available at home. Thus, in addition to issues related to the ‘digital divide’, here one’s own music device also bestows the privilege of a better listening quality.

Another concern was to be in a place that was different from the spot they usually use their computer, in an attempt to create a distance from work experiences. This was even more salient when it did not succeed. Two of our informants sat at their desk, for the simple reason that they could not move their computer elsewhere. They underlined that it wasn’t working well. It didn’t feel enough like leisure to sit where they spent most of the day working. One of them, though, sat a bit more distant to the screen, to establish a difference from his usual calls.

In addition to the placing of the technical devices, the preparation for attending the concert at home also involved first contacts with other participants. In some cases, a friend was invited, in other cases, housemates summoned (or chased out of the room), and on one occasion a little girl of 9 years old who was learning to play the piano herself, could stay up to watch the performance (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Arranging to be an audience at home with a guest at 1.5 meter distance. Courtesy of Jonna Brenninkmeijer.

On YouTube, spectators saw a picture that, just as a poster would have done, announced the concert with its title, musicians’ names and photograph, date, time, and booking information (Figure 4). We could not see the musicians on stage in advance, as in most concerts. The sound of the video featured a chatting audience, a loud murmur as when a profusion of voices are mingling with each other, as we would hear in concert halls. Next to the picture of the webpage, a space was left for comments: the live chat. Some audience participants wrote that they were waiting, ready to listen, and sent good wishes to the musicians, or just said hello to everyone. Such a collective anticipation just before the start of the gig could not happen with a recording streamed at a later date. Yet for some members of the audience, online chat was not enough: they missed the feeling of shared anticipation with other audience members. This was more prominent for people who watched the concert alone. Certain members of the audience, though, used text messages on their smartphone (as with WhatsApp or Signal) to share their feelings while anticipating the concert. This gave an impression of ‘going to a concert together’, despite being in different countries. In this case, the expectations did not only concern the music itself. As it was a new form of online art to the participants, their interest and excitement were also about how it would take place, and how it might work.

Figure 4.

The ‘poster’ displayed on YouTube before the music started. Courtesy of Henk Kraaijeveld.

The game is on!

The start of the concert was quick and direct: the murmur faded out, the ‘poster’ disappeared and gave way to a view of the musicians who then played the first notes. From the beginning onward, and until the last piece, a crucial constituent for both the performers and the audience was the ‘playing together’. In our interviews with the musicians, both emphasized this dimension when we asked how this format (an online live event) was made special compared to regular concerts, as well as to rehearsals or CDs recordings that are usually done in the studio. Meeting other musicians, playing together in the same space, and for an audience, made a big difference to them. Music happens in the immediate interactions between players, in the moment, the violinist explained:

When you’re in the room there, the game is on! Sometimes in microseconds, you have to react! (…) So you have to be sensitive. And you don’t have a lot of time (…) You have to decide in the moment! (...)When you play solo, you decide on the moment. But the fact that there is somebody else, in the interaction, there is something you cannot predict. Which is very welcome. And you have to react to it, just then! [emphasis in his intonation]

Playing together, he added, implies to be ‘willing to connect, and to jump into that risk’. The pianist described a bit more what this risk is about, when you cannot ‘do it again’:

It just needs to go on all the time, there is no way to go back anymore. (…) In the concert, if you lose each other or if you're not together anymore, then you need to find a way to go on. Then you need to listen to each other and make a decision, like ‘OK I will just continue what I do, and support the other, and maybe the other one will find me again’. Or you switch to the other persons because you are already hearing what they play. And you go to their track.

It is apparent from these quotes how much the live dimension of the gig contributed to making its eventness through the ongoing interaction between musicians. Of course, one can hardly imagine a concert that succeeds without such minute attunements between players, yet here this was even more crucial since the gig ran partly on improvisation. In the case of the online event, the flow and unpredictability in the interactions brought the musical experience closer to a regular concert: both musicians were focused on their own playing and the other player at the same time – ‘on what is happening right now’ as the pianist said.

Other formats they experimented with during the lockdown, the musicians added, did not involve that sense of the music flowing between players. For instance, although playing together through webcams while in different places allows immediacy (at least, if no latency problems disturb the synchrony), ⁹ it does not enable such a flow of interaction because the sound does not acoustically blend in the room to connect the players. The eventness depended on the direct encounter between the players and the sound that travels among them in the same acoustic place.

The push of the audience

There is another big difference between a rehearsal and an online concert. It is not only between the musicians that ‘the game’ should be ‘on’, but this movement needs to be shared with the audience. Even if the musicians did not sense the actual presence of listeners, they knew that people were listening. This provides the ‘push of the audience’. Although the audience has no physical presence in the same room, they impact on the ways players were involved in the performance. In the interviews this push took different forms.

First, prior to the concert itself, the musicians were asked to invite people. The organizers used mailing lists from jazz networks in the Netherlands. They created a Facebook page, and asked the musicians to promote the concert in their own networks, which they did by using text messages and emails. Interestingly, this promotion by the performers created an intimate audience, because they could invite relatives and friends from different cities and countries, who would not, in other times, have been able to attend a concert in Amsterdam. This intimacy also transformed the relationship between the musicians and the audience; before playing, the musicians saw on a list of tickets sold that this friend, colleague, aunt or grandma ‘was there’ to listen. This was very different from most concerts where the musicians do not know the audience. As the pianist put it, the many contacts he had before the concert with the people he invited, made him more involved in the gig itself. The personal ties between listeners heightened the ‘push of the audience’. Without having done the advertising and invitation work, and hence becoming more aware that people would actually be there, the pianist emphasized, he wouldn’t “feel the concert rush so much”, its eagerness.

Second, the push of the audience acted upon the musicians by leading them to moderate the intensity of the music. Bearing the audience in mind, musicians sought to create variations in the kinds of sounds they produced. The pianist told us how much, during the second song that they improvised, he would have loved to play ‘lots of notes’ on the piano. But he did not play them in order to create variation. Even if he was a bit less inspired during these moments, he valued what he saw as a greater good for the whole concert, more than his own inspiration on the moment. Improvising a performance incorporates the imagination of an audience.

Third, the musicians’ sense of a good musical flow went along with their assumption that the audience would enjoy it as long as they enjoyed it themselves. This would also be true when performing for an audience directly, because, even then, the public’s enthusiasm or boredom is often not so easily perceptible. During the livestream concert, the musicians thus relied on their ability to sense when the music is working well or not, in the confidence that a good flow would reach the audience. Both of them expressed it in slightly different ways:

Pianist: For the live stream, I was just assuming that people liked it, because I was enjoying a lot what we were playing. I just felt ‘Woah, this is working, we are playing our pieces nicely!’. The only thing I could imagine was that people were having a good time as well.

Violinist: Well, of course you miss the actual interactions when you see the people you are playing for. But, in a way, with Philipp [pianist], the music is always demanding. We have to focus on each other. And then you hope that that energy will project outwards.

Even if the musicians could not directly perceive the audience or sense its presence, they did play differently because they knew that they were listening and most probably enjoying the musical events that they could sense in the studio. Music hence goes beyond the performers’ artistic expression; it is an interactive process, in which the music can convey its specific energy while moving the musicians, and so perhaps audience as well. ¹⁰ In the absence of the bodily presence of the audience, the musicians relied on their own feeling of the music and assumed that its eventness was shared outwards. Now let’s see how this energy indeed reached the listeners or not.

How does the audience listen?

We asked the audience how they paid attention to the music. One question was whether they had experienced peak moments during the concert. It turned out that the interactions between the musicians were central to the audience’s appreciation of the music. ‘The game was on’ for the listeners as well: the eventness of the live music caught them. As an audience member comments, “Sometimes the music was more exciting. And if the communication between the musicians became more intense, I would pay better attention and feel more ‘pulled into’ the gig.” Another one remembers:

… one great moment of improvised communication between the two musicians. The pace was high and notes were proliferating. Playing became quite bodily engaged as well, with the pianist slightly standing off his chair, hesitating to hit the key, depending on what the violinist would do. I heard rhythmic patterns and bits of melody traveling from one instrument to the other, slightly transformed, re-interpreted in the process, opening up to new answer and inspiration. I did like a lot some of these moments of high attention and circulation.

If the game was on for listeners through the ongoing interactions of the musicians, seeing these interactions up close became particularly important. Listening emerged also as a visual activity that was made possible by the camera/screen setting and enhanced by their standpoints and framing. Audience members signaled how they looked at the musicians’ interactions, their movements and gestures while playing with their instruments, their bodily attitudes:

The communication in body language between the musicians I found very special, that really gave me the real concert feeling, as if I was there. It was nice that the set-up there, the stage for the musicians and positioning of the cameras made it possible for us to experience that.

What was really great was that a camera was pointed at the hands of the pianist. Often concert films show the face of the pianist (…) In concert halls the stage is often too high and the artist too far away, so you cannot see the hands as well. [Here] the camera position was also so very nice because it showed the interaction and energy between the musicians. This was a crucial part in the passion of the music. They really played with incredible energy!! (…)

These visual perceptions may involve audience members differently, by raising the feeling of a real concert or by conveying a sense of passion that is rarely seen from such a close view. In both cases, listening was done with eyes as much as with ears, looking at musicians’ interaction and body language, and this enhanced the listeners’ musical experiences.

Other audience members experienced limitations. One of them emphasized how, even if the sound quality was better than usual recordings, the two-dimensional experience gave him a “continuous feeling of distance”. This way, it could never approach a real concert. Another audience member missed the music that “sings all around” in the concert hall and that you “feel in your body”. One of the participants wrote that he missed the social immersion as well, when the audience is listening collectively to the musicians, and the concentration becomes much deeper in the room:

I missed the interaction between the musicians and the audience. What you have sometimes during a concert is a sense of collective tension/ anticipation (for instance when during a classical concert the coughing stops), where you can hear a pin drop in a concert hall.

Beyond peak moments (or the lack thereof), audience members also pointed out how, while listening, their attention was divided between the gig and to their surroundings at home. More precisely, the environment where listeners found themselves could become more or less present, and this contributed to create an absorption in the music listening.

In my own environment I paid attention to how the others responded. Everyone got very happy from the music and started to move and wiggle along; this is something we would not do so quickly in a concert hall.

I did not pay too much attention to my environment. I might have been distracted every now and then by a noise outside; or my roommate going to the bathroom or the kitchen. But usually, I can easily pay no heed to noisy environments to concentrate on what I want. (…) I think the reason for this is that, as a drummer and a guitarist, I have been trained for many years to be attentive to music; so my ears got easily caught into listening, and can separate a melody, a pattern, quickly from something else. ¹¹

To recreate a sense of absorption while not in the concert hall was thus possible. Yet such experience remained fragile because disturbances can easily happen, such as phone calls that were ignored or rushed through. Such disturbances happen more easily at home than in most concert halls, where many potential disturbers are kept outside the room, or remain unheard. Being absorbed at home also remains fragile, because a concentrated listening depends on the technology working. One of our informants was suddenly kicked out of the concert due to a technological disturbance. The speakers went mute and the sound switched back to the computer. After a few attempts to fix it, as she recounts, “I quickly decided to let it [computer sound] be, because I did not want to miss the rest of the gig.” The game was on for the audience as well, but social or technological disturbances and the technical layers made its fragility present again.

When words come in

Words slipped into the gig through the chat box, smartphone apps, or when the musicians addressed the audience. Between songs, the violinist said a few words, either to greet the audience members, or to introduce the next song. In these moments he stopped playing, faced the camera, and addressed the audience directly, creating a one-way eye contact.

Such a direct, verbal communication found ambivalent receptions. Many audience members appreciated that the artists addressed them, because it made the event feel more special, in contrast with a broadcast meant for an anonymous audience. These short introductions reminded the audience members that other people were also watching, even though they were out of sight. This contributed to making the concert, as one emphasized, more “authentic” than those broadcasted to a mass audience –even if some audience members did not pay much attention to these others.

Other participants, particularly those who did not know the musicians, experienced these comments as exclusive and less engaging than the music in itself. This also had to do with the technological set up that did not support the voices:

What did not work well was the patter of the musicians in between pieces. The microphone was clearly positioned for the instruments and did not pick up the voice well. I had to go to the stereo to put the sound louder and move it to full. And then lower it when the music started again. That was such a hassle that I cannot remember what was being said. I think something about friends abroad who were listening, but this was not so interesting to us.

The volume difference was a technical factor that disrupted the spell of being caught in listening to the gig and to performers’ comments. The intensity of verbal interactions remained fragile, especially since it requested audience members to rummage in the technical layers.

Another channel for words was the chat box. One had to reduce the screen, to enter comments in the chat and see responses from others. They sent encouragements, compliments, congratulations, acknowledgments, or applause (Figure 5). The musicians, however, did not receive the comments during the gig. In the interviews the violinist said he expected that it would have been distracting. While drawing a comparison with audience feedbacks in regular concerts (intense clapping, deep or distracted listening, yawning, or in some cases, dancing), he suggested that words do not have the same effect as bodily expressions: When playing in the same room, he would look at people, observe their facial expressions and body language, but this comes as a very different information than written text. ¹² For the audience it was possible to see that others enjoyed the music as much as they did, but, again, what disturbed the event was that they had to navigate the technical layers, like when closing the full screen and subscribing for the possibility to enter or read comments.

Figure 5.

(Anonymized) applauses on the YouTube chat at the end of a piece.

Finally, written comments also travelled between certain audience members, through smartphone messaging apps. Participants who reported it felt they were watching the concert together, with messages coming and going every now and then and at the end, commenting on the performance’s events as soon as they occurred. Smartphones, unlike the chat box or musicians’ speeches, easily allowed the kind of chat one has when sitting next to each other in a concert hall. Yet here it could occur between different countries. Also, through chat apps one could navigate between several of these one-to-one conversations, virtually extending the company from the person sitting next to you at home.

Closing the online performance

As soon as the musicians played the last notes, they ended the concert with a few joyful words, thanking the studio organizers and the audience. “We feel like we played for an audience, which was wonderful” they said, “Thanks so much for coming!” And they invited people to a Zoom meeting where they could have an informal chat with them – but only a few of them showed up. This specific moment – the closing of the performance – was frequently mentioned in our interviews with audience participants. Some of them commented on the applause that wasn’t shared. The end of a gig, they felt, is often a peak moment where the audience gets a say with a discharge of collective appreciation when applauding together. The chat box, although animated with many comments, did not allow for sharing such intensity at the end of a performance.

I semi-consciously expected that the whole audience would share their enthusiasm together, like with an avalanche of applause in the chat box. But this did not happen. This is usually a powerful moment in a show, when we all clap and cheer together; then the acknowledgment that we liked the musical moment is stronger, because collectively shared. [Here] It did not have that effect. I missed that avalanche.

The musicians, in turn, mentioned the Zoom chat as the moment/place where the audience became more concrete to them.

Pianist: Yes with the audience it was definitely closer during the Zoom chat. You see the screen with twelve heads popping up; You look and then [you recognize some relatives or acquaintances]. And then you feel ‘Oh wow! They’re all here!’, you know... And that's like opening the black box (...) Suddenly, you’re realizing that they were there during the concert. (…) I saw my aunt popping up, and the two children, and that was really nice (…) Because they're not especially into jazz music or into improvised music but they really enjoyed it. I mean, she's not really a big fan of the violin or viola, but with this event, she changed her opinion about it. This is really nice to hear, that you contribute to people's lives. That you can show them something else, that they didn't know before.”

Eventness, despites the distance

With this concert a collective experience was created through which participants shared aesthetic enjoyment. The audience composition and setting were new to all participants. Not only was the audience more intimate to musicians because of the invitation through their networks, but the audience members were also dispersed among different European countries, and the crowd included those who could not easily visit a concert hall in Amsterdam due to their age or location– and because of the lockdown.

But the performance first and foremost gained its salience for the participants because the ‘game was on’: the playing and sharing of music relied on its eventness – although there were some limitations. For the musicians it worked, because they were largely dependent on one another for their performance and because they experienced ‘the push of the audience’. For the audience, the game was on as well. They were drawn into a unique live performance happening in the moment, in the unpredictable, risky interactions between musicians.

The cozy studio and dispositions at home, and the technological arrangements, such as the sound quality, the camera angles and their variations, as well as the staging and the music itself, made it possible to closely involve the audience and facilitated the relationship between the musicians. When audience members used messaging apps to share appreciations or to comment the musical events in real time, it created the feeling of being in a concert together with other people, albeit without bodily contact. What worked less well were the possibilities for the audience to show their appreciation on the online platform, since they were invisible and mute to the performers. Also, the sense of a collective tension while listening together with unknown others was missing, as was the collective appreciation expressed by applause at the end. The chat box demanded technical manipulation, such as reducing screen size, that interfered with the concentration on the music. The Zoom meeting seemed a bit too personal for many, and some thought is needed to make strangers feel more welcome. This is a point of interest for future live streaming: how to create more room for and immediacy in the audience responses? For instance, a possibility for them to transmit sounds from a distance could be explored.

Ultimately, what made this experience collectively meaningful was its eventness. It happened in the moment, at a particular time, live. The simultaneous presence of musicians and a concrete audience, as well as the conditions they set up for playing and listening, transformed how the music was performed and enabled to perceive its events, rendering the gig way more exciting than a recording. This achieved eventness is in itself striking, considering that players and audience did not have any direct contact. The audience could only witness glimpses of each other, and the musicians did not see the audience at all, until they met some of them after the concert. But thanks to specific arrangements and ways of doing, all participants witnessed how the immediate sharing and appreciation of music provided them a meaningful, enjoyable experience.

Of course, online live concerts cannot replace regular gigs in concert halls. Several participants, both on stage and in the audience, emphasized this: it is not a same sense of interaction, of captivation, and not the same feeling of togetherness. As we note in the introduction, several authors attest that the relationship between audience members becomes much stronger when concertgoers listen together on the spot. Also, there’s no guarantee that the enjoyment we identified in our study can endure several lockdowns. The musicians later mentioned to us a tiredness, over time, among audience and artists of having to live and work through the mediation of screens. Yet, our analysis of the eventful character of this concert shows one way in which it is possible to create a collective and immediate experience of musical delight and social connection at distance in the midst of a lockdown.