2020: A Year in Review for a Concert Pianist
By: George Ko
Tags: Year In Review, Reflections, Memoir, Music, Covid 19

Disclaimer: This year in review starts a little pessimistic, but I guarantee towards the end it rises from the ashes.

2020 was a whirlwind of a year: a pandemic still raging, jobs lost, homes evaporated, and humanity on fire. It is probably the modern-day metaphor of Sisyphus’s eternal struggle of rolling a boulder up a scalding mountain. Every week felt like an eternal fall into a dark abyss. However, with the recent emergency authorizations of vaccinations, we are beginning to finally see a light at the end of this infernal tunnel.

Despite living in Mordor, there was a surge of courage, strength, and togetherness. People protested civil injustices, elections reshaped the balance of power, and able members of society ran to the support of local businesses when governments did not. Although we have a long battle ahead of us to right the many wrongs caused or revealed by COVID-19, our momentum as a society is as fervent as ever.

But what has life-like been for musicians, artists, and creatives? Rather, what has life been like for those that rely on in-person opportunities to put bread on the table? Well, it’s been tough.

As a musician, my Instagram feed was a daily cry for help and support. Friends, colleagues, prodigies, and experts were asking followers daily to support their Patreon, donate to PayPal, buy merchandise, etc. We were all struggling to find ways to survive, let alone thrive.

Before the March lockdown, I was gearing up to go on tour. After leaving the music world for a few years, and a vivacious few years in startups, my heart was searing to perform music. For five months, I had been preparing my new classical repertoire, contacting old friends to set up concerts and plan travel across 20 cities. Like millions of others, my plans halted, and my revival as a musician perished.

Squashed in my 350 square foot apart, I remember staring at the ceiling and feeling completely lost. All that work I did was for nothing.

After 2 weeks of solid Netflix binging, cereal eating, and video gaming, something inside me snapped. Now, usually when one uses the term snapped one means a psychological breakdown so magnanimous that it fabricates a Batman-Esque villain. However, in my case, it was more of a snap in the imagination. I just suddenly wanted to write my music.

As a classical concert pianist, we are probably the highest-fidelity cover artists in the world. We spend hundreds of hours, months, and sometimes years perfecting a piece of music and then we perform it on a glitzy concert hall stage for 1 hour. It’s a high-stakes, stress-induced, fragile-piercing profession. However, as someone who loves to collaborate, imagine the impossible, and generate silly dreams, being a cover artist always left my musical soul starved for more. I wanted to express what I thought, how I felt, how I imagined music could be. However, since classical music was my bread and butter, and I just followed the routine.

The collapse of the planet shattered my past prejudices of what I am and revealed what could be. In a way, the pandemic freed me of my traditional shackles.

This surge of excitement led me to probably the most transformative experience for me in 2020: recording a 12 track album live on Instagram.

A virtual listening party of my first album, Sonic Sanctum.

I remember just setting up my iPhone own the tripod, and just recording a stream-of-consciousness album completely improvised with the few people that tuned in on Instagram. For some reason, the combination of randomness, desperateness, and collaboration produced Sonic Sanctum, my first ever album, and my first ever publication of original music.

From there, the music just started pouring. I had this idea of composing an EP combining my love for space, exploration, Moebius art, and Star Wars. That gave birth to Millennium.

The cover art for my EP Millennium. You can stream it here.

I was having a blast making music. At the same time, my friend, colleague, and sensei Eric Nakamura invited me to play a Music Meditation on the Giant Robot Instagram to help people heal and connect through music during the pandemic. We’ve been doing live sessions on Instagram every week since March, even up until today.

New opportunities and friends also emerged from this new avenue of music-making. A friend and mentor invited me to compose and play the piano music for an upcoming movie on Lifetime. The Sonder House Label signed me for a single and EP release. I got to play a virtual performance for TEDx’s sustainability conference co-hosted by Happily. And more importantly, I got to share my music with a supportive community of fans.