Lansing McLoskey

Covid hit classical music hard. Among the first spreader events in the U.S. were large choruses, which makes perfect sense now that we understand how the virus spreads. For musicians and composers who work in close proximity, the pandemic left little room for safety maneuvering. How could a symphony orchestra play together? How could opera performances work? Largely, they didn’t.

A secondary fallout of shutdowns hit the pipeline of music, specifically projects that had been on the books but suddenly were in limbo. Grammy-award winner Lansing McLoskey, one of our most accomplished composers, had project after project postponed or canceled. The bottleneck is easing now, happily, and McLoskey’s thrice-scheduled work, a flute concerto titled, ...que la tierra se partió por su sonido, finally gets a performance in August, by Trudy Kane and the NFA Professional Flute Choir. (Performance at the annual NFA convention, Phoenix, Arizona, August 6.)