Alyssa Anderson adjusted the camera, set up a light, readied her laptop, checked her levels and pressed "Record." Then, finally, she sang.
"A este sol peregrino, sol peregrino."
The venue: her Minneapolis apartment. The audience: an iPad taped to a stand better suited to other tasks.
Since the pandemic, this is how Anderson, a mezzo-soprano, has made music — alone in her apartment, acting as her own sound engineer, stealing takes between passing garbage trucks.
"I'm glad to have the work," she said. "But I'll be really glad when this stuff is happening in person and not in my living room."
More and more, Anderson is booking gigs beyond her apartment walls. This month, she and five other vaccinated singers from the choir Border CrosSing recorded at Central Presbyterian Church in St. Paul. In July, for the first time in more than a year, she'll perform for a live audience.
"It's going to be glorious," she said.
But the return to live music has been slow. When the pandemic hit, freelance soloists and musicians — who work contract-to-contract, weekend-to-weekend — watched months' worth of performances evaporate. Because the virus spreads via exhaled droplets and particles, classical singers in particular have grappled with the worst of it, some struggling to pay rent, others contemplating new careers.
"It hasn't just been singers losing their ability to do their professional gigs — it's the whole ecosystem," said Border CrosSing founder Ahmed Anzaldúa.
A soloist might also sing in an ensemble, teach at a school and work at a church. "All of that collapsed on every level," he said. "Not just the concert work, but every single side gig that supports you in all these different ways professionally, socially and musically."
Artists and creative workers "remain among the most severely affected segment of the nation's workforce," Americans for the Arts argued in a May report, having lost an average of $34,000 in income since the pandemic's start. The arts and entertainment sector shed half its jobs between February and April 2020, falling from 2.5 million to 1.2 million, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That total rebounded to 1.9 million by April 2021. "Positive news," the national advocacy group said, "but arts jobs are still down 25%."
A blue Christmas
By December, Anderson had gone months without an in-person performance, without an audience, without a hug.
The holidays are typically packed with concerts, parties and corporate events, so "it's very strange not singing any of the Christmas stuff I'm used to doing," Anderson said then. She was recording, but worrying about the technical details — whether her computer would crash, whether she had pressed "Record" — was exhausting.
One two-minute song took two hours of takes.
"This is not making music," she said, sighing. "What's the point of this, and how long is it sustainable?"
Then she received a grant from Springboard for the Arts to record songs requested by residents of a Minneapolis retirement home. It paid just $500 but gave her purpose.
"This might be what gets me through Christmas, folks," she tweeted. "The grant was to use the arts to combat loneliness, and even though I wasn't intended to be part of the 'audience' for this project, it might work out that way."
When Anderson, 43, quit her 50-hour-a-week job to sing full time, she didn't picture becoming "a not-very-good audio engineer." She used to cram practicing into her off hours and take vacation time to perform. Becoming a contract musician meant more flexibility to take out-of-town concerts and focus on projects like RenegadeEnsemble and her duo, the Dream Songs Project.
But being a freelance worker with a 10-hour-a-week administrative job made filing for unemployment tricky, even after a COVID relief bill made gig workers eligible. As one friend enrolled in grad school and another took a full-time job in another field, Anderson wondered if she'd be next.
"How much further can I keep stretching the little bit of money I have?"
Finally taking the mask off
Gradually, classical music has returned to stages. Small groups of string players performed, distanced and masked. After a University of Minnesota study showed that aerosols tapered off from brass and wind instruments, those musicians, too, got back to work.
But the voice remained a threat.
Early in the pandemic, it became clear that singers could be superspreaders. A choir rehearsal in Mount Vernon, Wash., led to 52 people becoming sick and two dying.
"We've had to be really, really cautious," Anzaldúa said. The mechanics of singing make typical safety protocols difficult, he noted. "Wearing a mask is like putting a mattress on top of a piano."
This month, the CDC revised its recommendations, saying that fully vaccinated folks could sing together indoors. But soloists don't expect their calendars to fill until 2022.
"In the past two days I've had gig whiplash," said Minneapolis-based mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski. One day, she gained a potential "Messiah" in December. The next, an October date disappeared.
Musicians have "a rule of three" in deciding whether to take a gig, said Osowski, who before the pandemic was singing with orchestras across the United States and Europe. "Is it good music? Is it good people? Is it good pay?"
Now, they're adding a fourth question: "How did they act during the pandemic?"
Some organizations used a contract clause to cancel shows without paying performers. So Osowski appreciates groups that paid their musicians. Among them: the Schubert Club and Border CrosSing.
"Looking at the people who paid us, it's not the size of the institution, it's not even the size of the board," she said. "These people, there's a care in their mission."
Her brother, a virologist, had warned her: This could stretch out for 18 months or more. So Osowski recorded an album of lullabies for her friends' kids. She organized VocalEssence founder Philip Brunelle's art song catalog. She cross-stitched and hiked.
Then she was cast in Minnesota Opera's "Albert Herring," filmed at the Ordway and now streaming online, her first major opera contract. The COVID protocol was 11 pages long, "so I felt safe," she said. By the end, all the singers had gotten their second shots.
Wearing masks for rehearsals "still felt so lonely," she said. Then, at last, they took them off.
Learning to listen again
Recording in New Ulm in March, Anderson called the local Hy-Vee, hopeful. They offered her a leftover shot.
Before, she was protecting not only her body but her instrument. The lung damage caused by COVID could end a singer's career, she said. A breathing tube could, too.
Being vaccinated has made her more comfortable singing in churches and visiting her sister in Iowa.
Her financial situation, too, had steadied. The latest stimulus payment covered her rent, some of her utilities and part of a student loan payment. The first $10,200 she received from unemployment was not taxed, a welcome surprise. Then, when another round of the Paycheck Protection Program rolled out, she qualified as a sole proprietorship. Under the new rules, self-employed people could calculate their maximum loan using gross income, rather than net profit.
"That was a game-changer," she said. "All those things together have bought me time."
Recording early American hymns with Border CrosSing, Anderson felt joyful — but also rusty and a bit wary. After many months of singing alone, she's relearning to listen closely to other vocalists' vowels and tones.
"As singers, there was a lot of erring on the side of caution," Anderson said. "So many of us wondered: Will we ever do this again? Is there going to be a career to come back to?"
It's hard to shake that mind-set, she said, trusting that the vaccine will protect her and that singing will support her again.
