After three months of shuttered concert venues, hearing Laura Marling’s voice eddy around the Union Chapel in north London is like being dosed with a vitamin I had been leaving out of my diet. It’s almost like hearing live music for the first time; a different kind of beauty than you get on a daily walk or a drive to a castle, something vividly real but constantly evaporating into the air.
Aside from 25 production staff, there’s almost no one else in the venue for this concert, which is being streamed online as one of the first fully realised gigs since the arrival of coronavirus. Backed solely by her acoustic guitar, Marling plays one set for the UK in the evening and a later one for a US audience. She is recorded in crystal clarity and filmed on three cameras, two of them roving around and approaching her, capturing the changing weather across her face.
There have been plenty of free lo-fi performances by stars on Instagram during lockdown, or charity initiatives such as Together at Home, but Marling’s concert is the next step for a live music sector flailing for its previous levels of artistry and revenue: £900m losses are predicted for this year in the UK. The event is ticketed at £12 or $12 a stream, and while her manager won’t give me exact numbers, he says more than 6,000 have been sold. Michael Chandler, the chief executive of Union Chapel, says events such as this feel like “a glimmer of light” for a shuttered venue that, with two-metre social distancing, could only accommodate 84 of its usual 900 capacity.
“I loved it,” Marling says between her sets, relaxed and happy. “I love the weirdness of the intensity of playing live, and that was a totally uninterrupted version of it. I don’t have to take a break and say something awkward – banter doesn’t come naturally to me.”
Marling superfan Mitchell Stirling, who watched the livestream at home and has seen her 32 times before, concurs. “Laura’s never one for onstage banter, so you’re not missing out on that kind of thing,” he says. “It was a strange hinterland between being at an intimate concert and watching a DVD, but it was excellent.” Another fan, Hannah Gallagher, says it was “gorgeous, and the production values were incredible. She doesn’t need to pull out many tricks, and that translated well. Me and my boyfriend WhatsApp-called each other while livestreaming the concert on our laptops; he put his phone up next to him so he could turn to me as if he was standing next to me at a gig, which was really nice.”
The livestream’s director, Giorgio Testi, says it is “a dream come true, because you can capture the beauty of the venue and the artist without ruining the experience for people watching in a crowd. My job can become even more creative.” He aimed for “something extremely cinematic”, using ambitiously long, unbroken shots to help immerse everyone watching at home, and says this approach demands an artist of Marling’s calibre. “It brings back the importance of being a very good performer, because you can’t hide. Either you can do it, or you shouldn’t show up on stage.”
The chat-averse Marling doesn’t acknowledge his cameras’ presence, but says there is potential for other performers to play around with them. “The ability to think up a persona with that level of intricacy is actually really hard, and that doesn’t come naturally to me, either. My persona, I guess, is holding on to intensity for as long as I possibly can. For other people, it’s more theatrical, and that could be an amazing extra quality to this new normal.”
The hope is that this could become an entirely new ticketed format to match the success of livestreamed theatre and opera performances, with the strictures of coronavirus forcing people to embrace the idea. Audiences who live too far from a touring route could get to experience a performer at close quarters, and as Hannah says: “There was no one putting their phones up and blocking your view; there was guaranteed clarity. And you don’t have annoyances like toilet breaks.” From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/11/i-loved-the-weirdness-can-laura-marlings-crowdless-gig-rescue-live-music
