Today on Midday on the Arts, we’re going to talk about the impact of the pandemic on one part of the creative economy: classical music.

The Brookings Institution estimates that 2.7 million jobs and $74 billion dollars in wages have been lost in the fine arts overall. More than $150 billion dollars in sales have vanished into the ether since the onset of the coronavirus.

Like their counterparts in jazz, pop music and the theater world, classical musicians and the organizations they work with have been contending with months of COVID-induced cancelations, and it’s widely expected that theaters and concert venues will be among the last to open once the virus has been curtailed to the point when it’s safe to congregate in crowds again. What will musicians and musical organizations need to do, to bounce back from the body blow that has been COVID 19?

Tomorrow, the Peabody Institute will host the first of three on-line panel discussions that take-up how the landscape of the performing arts will change after the pandemic. The symposium is called “The Next Normal: Arts Innovation and Resilience in a Post-COVID World.”

Fred Bronstein is the Dean of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. He’s moderating the panels. Marin Alsop is in her final season as the Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She’ll be part of the lineup that includes the composer Tom Dolby, the pianist Steven Hough, the opera director Peter Sellars, and others. Fred Bronstein and Marin Alsop join Tom for the hour today, on Zoom. Listeners are welcome to join us as well.

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