Emerald City Music pulls together livestreamed concert and talk to benefit musicians

Until a few weeks ago, violinist Kristin Lee spent most of her time traveling, performing in concerts all over the world.

Now — like people all over the world — Lee, artistic director of Emerald City Music, is sheltering in place in her Manhattan apartment.

“It’s a lot,” she said Monday. “It’s been incredibly strange, because I live my life on the road, and everything has stopped. I was supposed to take off to Los Angeles right after the last concert I played, which was about 10 days ago, and it got canceled and then the next thing got canceled. … I’ve been struggling with anxiety and with the fact that I can’t go anywhere.”

Among the canceled events was a concert set to happen Friday in Olympia. But you can hear Lee perform on Saturday, when she and many of the musicians Emerald City has brought to town will be featured in a livestreamed fundraiser on Facebook.

The fundraiser will benefit those same musicians, all of whom are struggling financially in the wake of canceled concerts. Lee is one of them.

“The rest of the spring season, which I’m dependent on financially, it’s all gone,” she told The Olympian. “Completely gone. When I was dwelling on that negativity, I realized I was digging a hole for myself. I was going into an awful place.”

She felt, she said, as though there was nothing she could do to help anyone. Then she spoke to Emerald City executive director Andrew Goldstein about creating the online concert, which will feature the Aizuri Quartet , Arx Duo, the Dover Quartet, Sandbox Percussion, WindSync and many of the soloists who’ve performed here since the series began in 2016.

The concert is a benefit for the participating musicians, including Lee.

“Emerald City is not taking a cut from this,” Goldstein told The Olympian. “We have had to cancel our concerts, too, and we have stuff that we’ll have to figure out. But this is about helping our community first and foremost, about bonding together and making something important happen.”

Originally, he and Lee imagined gathering the ensembles together to play live at the streamed concert, but then tightened rules intended to slow the spread of the new coronavirus forced a change of plan.

Now, while some soloists will perform live, much of the music will be prerecorded, and the artists also will talk about what they’re experiencing as they — like their audience members — deal with the extraordinary reality of this moment.

“Seeing what people are doing in their isolation period could be really interesting,” Lee said. “We’ll be chatting about the whole situation, asking artists: How are you spending your time? Are you practicing 24/7, or are you putting your instrument to rest and spending more time on other things?”

She herself is surrounded by an unfamiliar stillness. “The city that never sleeps” is tucked in tight, she said.

“It’s strange,” she said. “I’m used to a lot of noise on the streets and hearing the traffic. … At the hospitals, I’m guessing that it’s like a war zone out there, but in the apartment, it’s isolated and quiet.”

Emerald City Music Cares

• What: The Olympia- and Seattle-based chamber series is offering an online program of livestreamed and pre-recorded music and artist interviews hosted by artistic director Kristin Lee, who’ll be livestreaming from her Manhattan apartment.
• When: 4-6 p.m. Saturday, March 28
• Where: facebook.com/emeraldcitymusic
• Cost: Free, with donations appreciated and all proceeds being split among the participating musicians
• More information: emeraldcitymusic.org