With Berlin in full social distancing and quarantine mode options to perform live have become  non-existent. Fortunately with a home studio and a partner who is a total techie the possibilities to make music and videos were endless.

Matthew Presidente, one of my best friends & favourite musicians to collaborate with, decided to start a concert series on Youtube called “World is Watching”.  The concept for this weekly Youtube series is to collaborate and do duets with artists/musicians and connect with audiences  The show is pre-recorded and video edited since there are a lot of people involved each week and a no budget facebook live stream can be unreliable and very poor quality.  Matthew reached out to me mid-March to be a part of the show and I immediately said yes.  So, Matthew began working on “World is Watching” in Vancouver on March 18th. Don and I quickly converted our apartment in Berlin into a recording/filming studio to record & film my backing tracks for two of Matthew’s songs “Gracious” & “Valentines Day”. All of the artists/musical guests invited to participate put a little elbow grease and love into the project!  “World is Watching” Episode 01 premiered on Matthew President’s Youtube Monday, March 23rd at 8:00 p.m. (Pacific).

At the same time our friends Steffen Roll & Nina Severin from “Only You Interviews” decided to reach out to the Berlin creative community in regards to starting a new interview series on artists in isolation. This interview series is focusing on how people in different communities are coping with the new reality that comes with a pandemic, isolation and quarantine.  Both Steffen & Nina reached out to me to do an interview and (of course) I said yes.  My interview titled Tara C. Taylor | “because that artist is hungry” | #corona premiered on Youtube on Wednesday, April 1st!

On April 1st Don and I got back to work on three songs for “World is Watching” episode 03. This time Matthew collaborated with backing vocals & piano on “Le Louver” (an original by me),  Please, Please, Please Let me get what I want (a cover by The Smiths) and I tracked backing vocals for an original song by Matthew titled “Glamour”.   Needless to say there is a great deal of effort to produce three videos with multiple camera angles and live off the floor recording with people on two different continents! Don figures it takes about 8-10 hours per final song.  Once again all of the artists/musical guests invited to participate put a ton of work and love into the project and it premiered on Youtube on Monday, April 6th at 8:00 p.m. (pacific).

It’s time for a glass of wine. 😉

Cheers and stay healthy!