Biz news: Bachtrack shuts up shop

In the absence of live performance, the review website has put all its staff on furlough.

Message from the founders:

 
Since virtually all Bachtrack’s income comes from clients who promote live performance and the Covid-19 pandemic has caused the cancellation of almost every concert or opera in the world, we have needed, with great reluctance, to take extreme measures to ensure Bachtrack’s survival.

We can’t afford to keep paying our wonderful employees, so from April 9th, we have taken advantage of the UK government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and placed them on furlough. This means that they will receive a reduced salary which will be reimbursed to us, but the rules of the scheme bar them from working for us during this period. We look forward to ending this furlough and returning them to normal employment as soon as we possibly can.

From the point at which concert halls and opera houses started to close, we have been busy turning Bachtrack into a fabulous resource for watching music online. We’ve listed literally hundreds of concerts and operas available for you to view, the vast majority of them free – the choice is bewildering! We’ve also added a section for other performance arts: theatre, comedy, circus and even videos from art galleries.

The two of us will continue to work on the site, full time and unpaid. Of course, we will not be able to publish anything like the normal volume of new material, but we will do our very best to keep the site vibrant.

We very much hope and trust that the pandemic is close to its peak and that the world will recover over the coming few months. When our clients are able to promote their events once again, we will be there, stronger than ever before.

In the meantime, while the halls remain dark, please enjoy the amazing variety of video on offer.

Stay safe, and keep the flame of music burning.

David and Alison Karlin