New Streaming Opera Concerts Announced From National Sawdust's Digital Discovery Festival

National Sawdust's physical doors are still closed but, thanks to a generous grant from the Alphadyne Foundation, the mission of providing artists the resources and support they need to create and present new work continues with the Digital Discovery Festival, featuring over 100 artists from May through August. All past and present Digital Discovery Festival events are accessible on the newly-constructed Live@NationalSawdust website, as well as on Facebook Live, entirely free of charge.

Since its inception in late April, the Festival has released several free-to-watch events each week, including at least one newly-released full-length Archival Concert, two 30-minute taped-from-the-artist's-home Discovery Performances that showcase emerging artists in concert, and a performance-based Masterclass with an established artist discussing their pandemic experience and their vision for the future. Following their premiere dates, all events are readily accessible on the newly-constructed Live@NationalSawdust website, as well as on Facebook Live. Both sources also house videos from all the previous week's events.

All participating Discovery and Masterclass artists are paid $1000 per performer for each 30-minute event and receive gifts of relevant audio-visual equipment and livestream training to better prepare them for the immediate realities and future of the post-COVID live music world. In keeping with National Sawdust's reputation for the highest-quality A/V experience in our concert hall, the venue's staff provides strong oversight for sound and lighting and commercial-level post-production finishing. No other American music venue is currently providing this level of artistic financial support and polished content.