A week or so before official lockdown was announced, I remember looking out at the audience in the hall, then turning to my desk partner in an interval and saying to her “wow they’re not going to be able to keep concert halls open if coronavirus gets worse are they?”. She replied that she didn’t think so, but neither of us were unduly worried. We though maybe a closure of a few weeks, we were joking that as long as we got to the end of the run we were in we’d be okay with it (we didn’t make the end of the run…), and the truth of how massive the impact of this illness would be had still not quite hit us.

About a week later I was beginning to realise that it could have devastating repercussions, and a couple of days after that a concert I was in was cancelled a few hours before it started (after two days of rehearsals) because the daughter of one of the violinists had a cold. That’s when it really hit me – this was potentially the end of concerts for quite some time. The day after that cancelled concert, I found out just how bad it would be. That was the 23 rd March, when the government announced that theatres and large venues should close. In the space of about three hours I received email after email, effectively wiping out everything that I had written in my diary until about June (post June work has all gone now too). I can’t remember ever feeling that scared, as not only my whole source of income, but also a huge part of my life and what I look forward to every day, no longer existed.

Now we are in May, and whilst the prospect of large-scale concerts any time soon looks less and less likely by the day, lockdown life is beginning to take on a new and weird sort of normality. I moved in with my boyfriend when the government clarified that no visits between households were allowed, not even cycle rides in the park (lots of parks are now closed to bikes anyway!), which has really helped eradicate the feeling of being a bit lost in a new world. He is also a musician, so emotionally it has been brilliant to go through such an upheaval with someone else, and I know I’m so lucky I’m able to do that. I’m also incredibly lucky that I have quite a bit of teaching. This is a lifeline to me now – both financially (although it doesn’t cover all bills, it certainly helps), and as a way to structure and fill my day.

All musicians are workaholics by nature. We’ve all chosen a career with totally antisocial hours, late nights, long gigs, days of rehearsals in freezing churches (I even miss the freezing rehearsals!), no weekends, no days off unless we accept the prospect of losing work…and suddenly now we have nothing. In many ways I think that is probably good and healthy for a lot of us – perhaps a bit of time to stop and let our bodies recover. But I certainly feel weird without hours of travel, long rehearsals and late nights (is that me feeling rested for once?!). The teaching I have at least offers a sense of achieving something with my day, and now more than ever when children are stuck at home, also feeling confused as to the enormity of the change in their lives, I can feel the real good teaching an instrument can do.

My boyfriend and I have started playing duets together, born out of the NHS Thursday claps. We started with Somewhere Over the Rainbow like everyone else, and now try for a new duet each week. There isn’t a huge amount written for Tuba and Viola (and by that I mean absolutely nothing at all), so during the week we think about what to play, and set about arranging it. At the start I left that all to Mike, as I’ve never done much arranging and had absolutely no faith in my arranging skills at all. However, as lockdown has lengthened, and ‘normal life’ is now a total misnomer, I’ve realised that I need to be using this time for something besides panicking. So I’ve taken the plunge, downloaded Sibelius and am now learning how to arrange. I might even foray into composing…we will see!!

jenny rehearses with students from harris academy peckham

Thursday evenings are such a lovely evening on our street. We start with a few minutes of clapping, then Mike and I get out our instruments and play a song. Then the guy two doors down sticks his disco ball and lights out of an upstairs window, turns on his bubble machine and cranks the volume way up on the stereo! Next door to us is a family with young children (the youngest is 6), and across the street is a girl of a similar age, who both love playing in the bubbles (from the safety of their own front porches of course). Dotted all down the street are some elderly people who do not have the chance to see many people anymore, and it is lovely when everyone emerges onto their doorsteps, claps, shouts, dances and just generally feels a community spirit that I have absolutely never felt since moving to London 12 years ago. This period of our lives is in so many ways simply awful, but if a lasting collective community spirit comes out of it then that will be a definite silver lining.

As ever, Multi-Story is right there in the thick of it regarding education and workshops for children. It's one of the things I love most about Multi-Story in general - that it sees a need in children, and immediately sets about filling it. I've been so lucky to work for them for 7 years now - and I've loved every minute of it. The week lockdown was announced, I had lots of Multi-Story projects in the diary, all of which I was very excited about. One in particular that I was looking forward to was The Endz, a 40 minute musical show written by teenagers at Harris Academy about the dangers of gangs and crime. We had had a couple of rehearsals and were about to do the shows when everything was cancelled, and I thought it was the biggest shame of all that those kids didn't get to perform the piece they'd worked so hard on. I'm really hoping we will still be able to perform it when we are allowed!

Since lockdown, Multi-Story has been working really hard to get things online. We are going to record a bit of The Endz remotely with the children involved, and virtual Schools Tour workshops have been organised. I'm really looking forward to be involved with Multi-Story again - even if it's not quite the same as normal, we can still reach young people online and audiences with music which is a really great thing.

The next step for me in this lockdown world is a scary one. I love my teaching and don’t want to lose it, but if large scale concerts aren’t going to happen until potentially into 2021, it might be time for me to start thinking of something else to do. I’m am, however, desperate for this not to happen if at all possible. Can you imagine a world in a couple of years, post coronavirus, without large-scale music? I can’t, and I don’t want to even try. So whilst I can vaguely make this new reality work, I will stay at home, and find ways that me and my viola can still contribute to audiences lives, whoever those audiences may be, whether it’s on our street, in videos for kids, streamed home recitals or live workshops for school children.

Jenny Coombes