Anthony Barfield’s “Invictus”

 This post today is about a really cool piece we listened to in class today called “Invictus” by Anthony Barfield. 

Link to Video: https://youtu.be/6O8wKvJlLko?si=02SSCdtsaVuXO1se 

I have already had a lot of exposure to Barfield’s music. He writes great music for low brass, and I just recently gave a performance of his pice for trombone, “Red Sky”. 

This video was clearly a covid era video, it was filmed outside, performer were separated, and the general atmosphere of the video was that all of the performers were very grateful to even be making music. Covid was a tough time for everyone, I certainly have a lot of really unpleasant memories from that general part of my life. That said, watching this video made me really think about the cool things we started doing during that era. All sorts off projects like this wouldn’t have been made, or at the very least they would look very different. So I think it’s a good thing to try and remember some of the lessons we had to learn during that period. 

During that era, every musician realized that if they wanted any sort of presence, they needed to get savvy with video making and editing. People are still doing that sort of stuff, but I honestly miss these cool outdoor performances and projects that some people were able to make. I think in a day in age where we’re not all hiding inside, getting music out of the concert hall and into public spaces like these could be a way to try and get brass music out into the public. Obviously there are noise laws we have to follow, but wouldn’t it be cool to do some sort of brass ensemble performance down town in Iowa City? The Ped Mall seems practically built for such a performance. If there’s one thing I’ve learned during this course, it’s that we as performers need to keep finding ways to innovate and make performances accessible to the average people. 

Covid was an era that forced us to be more resilient than we ever had to be as artists. It was hard and I don’t blame people fr wanting to try and erase that part of history from their minds. But I think we can take the lessons learned five whole years ago and try to apply them today. Many of theme weren’t even new lessons, it’s just that we had to actually get creative. I’m interested to hear what some of my colleagues think about this, and curious as to what creative performance avenues we can find.