Today is the day this year’s edition of the Sisters Folk Festival, which usually plays on 11 stages all around the tiny town of Sisters, was to have opened. And what a lineup of talent for those stages, from large to small, there was.
But then came Covid. In response, the folks at SFF drastically downsized the event to just one stage.
And now comes the wind, which is blowing heavy smoke from the fires in western Oregon over here to us, on the east side of the Cascades. The smoke is so heavy that it is dangerous to be outside for anything. So even the downsized version of the SFF was canceled.
Then there’s the Americana Song Academy, an intense, three-day immersion into music that would have taken place this past week. It’s thrilling, intense, and incredibly useful to musicians. Canceled. (This image shows participants in the 2019 edition of the Americana Song Academy. I'm in the middle of the back row.)
But that’s not all.
Many of my pals know that I derive huge joy and satisfaction from singing with the Central Oregon Mastersingers. This season, again because of Covid, and because choral singing requires huge expenditures of breath, we are on hiatus.
Normally we probably would have sung our fall concert and be deep in preparations for our Christmas concert. But not this year. The risk of Covid infection is just too great.
With the coming of fall and, I hope, a bit of rain, the fires and smoke probably will mitigate. But I do not think that Covid will mitigate anytime soon.
I’ll be very happy when this all ends and we can begin trying to figure out what the New Normal looks like.
I just hope that it includes enjoying and/or performing live music.
-JFT