The Last Straw?

Over the past week I have done my best to overlook the defective audio signals provided by Old First Church for the substandard livestream account of the San Francisco International Piano Festival. Microphone placement for the piano itself has been consistently faultless, but any remarks to the audience are virtually inaudible to those attending the performance through the YouTube feed. Sadly, last night the need for the spoken word was more critical than usual.

Jeffrey LaDeur’s inaudible introduction to last night’s Old First Concerts program (screen shot from the YouTube video of the performance)

This began with an extended introduction by Jeffrey LaDeur to introduce two solo piano compositions by Maurice Ravel composed in 1913 and 1911 (order of appearance on the program). While waiting to listen to the music, I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what LaDeur had to say about either of these pieces, let alone Ravel himself. This was more than a little aggravating, since the 1913 “Prélude” is hardly ever performed.

This was followed by a a series of compositions by Bill Evans performed by Stephen Prutsman. Since the titles were not listed in the program, he introduced each one by name. That was where the inaudibility of the livestream virtually demolished the program. Evans was one of the most prolific jazz composers in the twentieth century, and I cannot begin to enumerate the diversity of his creations that I have in my two box sets of his recordings. Attaching a name to a tune that was inaudibly introduced was out of the question.

Readers that followed this site through the pandemic know that, when probably engineered, streamed video can be a great asset. However, when the engineering quality becomes a liability, one would be better off without the resource at all. On the basis of some of the camera shots, it appears that Old First Concerts is drawing audiences again. Perhaps current resources applied to their livestream efforts could be used elsewhere more fruitfully.