Perhaps you started a novel. Maybe you began studying some new music, like that Scriabin or Prokofiev you’ve always intended to learn.
Maybe you’re a presenter and a musician, and had to navigate the new Zoom-concert world to keep things together.
The pandemic has done this to most performers. For Janice Weber, it’s what she’s always done.
Weber is a prolific author—her latest novel recently finished, and circulating for a publisher. She’s an accomplished pianist—for decades a mainstay of the Boston Conservatory faculty, and a respected soloist throughout the world.
And she is a presenter. The Mattapoisett and Jamaica Plain resident is also artistic director of the South Coast Chamber Music Series, which is thriving through the pandemic, but anxious to get back to the live stage and audiences.
Weber has always been this busy, and ambitious. “From the beginning I did the two—writing and playing,” she says, thinking back to her student days at the Eastman School of Music. The extra time was still welcome, in its way.
“The upside is that I finished my eighth novel,” she says. “It’s a lot of work—every day, eight hours. I finished in October. It’s set in Cape Breton. I feel like I would have never gotten it done—it took Covid to help me.”
That sounds excessively modest, but the time in isolation did changed Weber’s work flow.
“Before, I would get a couple chapters done, and then a big concert would come up and I would just drop it. You can’t have the two worries at once.”
She’s not giving out the title of the upcoming novel, but it’s certain to continue the well-read books that began with 1985’s “The Secret Life of Eva Hathaway”—still in print. Full of intrigue and erotic action, with multi-faceted female protagonists, many of the novels reference Weber’s other career—“music had something to do with all of them, until the seventh,” she says—and several have been optioned for film.
“I was always a writer,” she says. “In the ’80s, John (her husband John Newton, whose recording company Soundmirror is in international demand) was on the road months at a time, with everything going from analog to digital. So I wrote ‘Secret Life,’ and it was successful. That kind of kicked things off.”
She hasn’t abandoned her music audience during the pandemic. Weber’s solo engagements have been postponed, naturally. But the South Coast Chamber Music Series, in its 20th season and enjoying a robust affiliation with the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, has thrived in the livestream era. “If it was just myself,” she says, “I don’t know if we could have survived.”
It’s not the same as live concerts—“Everyone has been so eager to get back to normal,” Weber says—but the group has stuck together. The virtual season continues with concerts in April and May. Weber hopes to return soon to live performances, perhaps with even more concerts.
“It will be interesting to see if groups include online streams when they go back,” she says, echoing a thought that many presenters have. “These are the people who are most careful about their health. I’ll bet most groups will keep both formats.
“You get a much bigger audience online,” she says, “if you have a good system, and nice sound. Some enjoy seeing the faces and the closeup camera angles. And being able to leave for a while and then come back.”
Expanding the SCCMS reach is a possibility. “I think we can go back to the same format,” she says, referring to concerts on Saturday afternoons in Marion, and Sunday afternoons in South Dartmouth. “I’m also looking into expanding to Rhode Island, for a Friday concert.
“And I’m hoping we go to six concerts—it would be nice,” she says. “When you play with the same people, and repeat concerts, it gets better. And these people are good to begin with.”
Keith Powers covers music and the arts for Gannett New England, Leonore Overture and Opera News. Artists Alone is a series about musicians and the impact of the pandemic. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com.