The Nicolini, live: 2020 and 2021 with no audience
When the rooms emptied, the Conservatory kept playing on video: fifteen pianists from fifteen homes in a single overture, the departments’ Open Days, the Festival trailer, concerts recorded session by session in the concert hall, and the exam livestreams.
In spring 2020 the Nicolini Conservatory closed its doors, but it did not stop playing. For more than a year lessons, exams and concerts went through a screen, and we were on the other side: editing, filming, keeping the livestreams up.
From home, in a single video
The first jobs came from the students’ homes. In April and May, Sandokan, a montage of clips filmed at home, with graphics. In May, Leonora: Beethoven’s Leonore No. 3 overture in its piano transcription, played one section each by fifteen pianists of the department, each in their own home, and stitched into a single video, all the way to the finale with the orchestra. Also in May, the Goodnight Project, a choir rebuilt from recordings sent from home.
The Open Days and the Festival
Between June and July we filmed the departments’ Open Day videos: Electronic Music and Composition, Keyboards, Percussion. In August, the 2020 Festival trailer: Piacenza from above, its squares, churches and statues, and a 740-frame timelapse in Piazza Cavalli.
The hall as a studio
With no audience, the concert hall became a recording studio. For the «Una stagione su… Misura» series we recorded the Christmas concert in sessions, from 4 to 14 December: first the brass in the hall, then piano, clarinet and piano, the voices captured in Ambisonics and mid-side, the piano duo. Then editing, titles and colour grading, and on 22 December the concert was online. The spring concert, filmed on 21 April 2021, went out on YouTube the next day.
The exam livestreams
Exams and graduations went live, and the technical side of the livestreams became one of our standing tasks. With a single network shared with the offices, every livestream was a small feat: that is where the technology plan told in The Nicolini’s concert hall rebuilt began.
2021: reaching people from afar
In spring 2021, with enrolments coming and the doors still half closed, we filmed the videos presenting the Conservatory and its courses, and the promotional video for the 2021/22 academic year.
Photos: GR STUDIO SRL, from the 2020 Festival trailer and the Piazza Cavalli timelapse.
