The shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic hit musicians hard, with concert halls and rehearsal spaces shuttered and silent. But a new music initiative
The shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic hit musicians hard, with concert halls and rehearsal spaces shuttered and silent. But a new music initiative from the Library of Congress embraces the constraints of COVID-19. The series is a collection of 10 videos of 10 different original compositions that will premiere online starting Monday, June 15. It’s called the Boccaccio Project.
David Plylar is a senior music specialist at the Library of Congress and the person who spearheaded the project; it’s named after the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio, who saw the Black Death devastate Europe during the 14th century. Boccaccio’s The Decameron follows 10 people who flee the plague in Florence and tell each other stories in a remote refuge. Pylar says that story feels very modern.
„You can take people out of what they know about society and they still have this compulsion to tell a story,“ he says. „And I felt that Boccaccio exemplifies that. And while we are much more connected now than they were in his time, we are isolated and we still have this desire to reach out to each other.“
Luciano Chessa, one of the composers commissioned by the Library of Congress, meant to stay only a week in San Francisco. Chessa flew out from New York for a concert in March. From there he had events scheduled in Colorado, in Ohio and around the country. But then, like so many other musicians, the coronavirus pandemic changed his plans.
„The world changed,“ he says. „So I ended up staying in San Francisco for two months instead of just a week.“
He worried about his parents in Italy as that country felt the worst of COVID-19.
„I think the most vivid images were basically caskets in piles outside of hospitals or retirement homes,“ Chessa says. „And my aunt died in March. We don’t know whether exactly [if] it was COVID-19 or not because at the time, there were no tests.“
In April, he got a commission from the Library of Congress for the Boccaccio project.
