Throughout my adult life as a musician, I have never experienced what most people would call a daily routine. Those of us in the profession don’t keep regular hours. We have rehearsals and concerts on different days at different times. Sleep patterns change depending on when we complete our work and then start up again.

Now that I have been holed up in my bunker for six weeks (or has it been six months?), I have a consistent regimen. It did not take long to settle in, and I suppose it was inevitable that some sort of pattern would emerge. Conductors do not practice at home; they study whichever works are next on the agenda. As the cancellations kept rolling in, the need to have pieces ready to go disappeared.

Well, here we are, mostly stuck at home—some working, others studying, and many trying to figure out what to do to fill the time. For me, the month started quietly, but by the time I started rehearsing with the DSO for planned performances of Carmina Burana, the World Health Organization had declared the coronavirus a pandemic, and life in the United States began to change. The next few days brought concert cancellations, starting with those in Detroit.

Next it was with the young musicians of The Orchestra Now at Bard College in New York. We were supposed to play a program in Manhattan, but the school shut down classes, and you just cannot rehearse an orchestra virtually.

¡Viva España!

It is not often that I get to spend a whole month in a country other than the United States. The couple of times it has occurred, I was involved in an opera production, when you have to hang around through the rehearsals and performances. This past month, following the week in Dublin, Cindy and I headed for Spain, where I had two weeks of concerts and two weeks of sightseeing.

Starting off in Mallorca, I was in familiar territory. Having conducted there a couple years ago, I knew the orchestra and most of the city. As with so many European ensembles, the Balearic Orchestra does its rehearsing in a studio, away from the concert hall where it performs. Although I have written about this situation before, it bears repeating. The hall is to the orchestra as the violin is to the violinist. Imagine soloists needing to practice using one instrument but doing the final rehearsal and performance on another. Yes, I know that pianists have the same, if not a worse problem, but they can still develop their own personal sounds and styles by themselves.