Brownell’s Corona Family Concerts coming to an end in July
Edwin Orion Brownell, supported by his wonderful Israeli-born wife Nechama Surik, has been making people smile during the COVID-19 pandemic via his Corona Family Concerts broadcast live on Facebook.
There have been more than 1,000 household views for every concert from last Chanukah through May. “Although the pandemic is not over by a long shot, the rest of Canada and I will be going back to work, and so I have bittersweet feelings in announcing the end of our Facebook Live Corona Family Concert Series,” Edwin told me.
“Over the last 16 months between March 20, 2020 and July 24, 2021 I will have played three series of 134 entirely different concerts for well over 100,000 household views. Lonely people from all over the world have come together in this time of isolation to find company, healing, love and family through our music and our shared community. I have to say myself that even though I have played all across the world, with legendary rock and classical musicians, and on stages in front of the political elite of Canada, Morocco and Israel, creating this online concert series has been the highlight of my career.”
Edwin started on March 20, 2020 with an audience that included many of our own front line health care workers. “As the pandemic progressed, some of us lost family members to COVID and more than a few of our online family have gotten sick themselves while working to care for our sick and elderly,” he says. “Despite these traumas, we have always come together in friendship and solidarity to give support to each other as we try to survive the many horrors of this plague. Soon after the series began, we started having regular listeners tuning in from every country in Europe, from Africa, from South America, Australia and the Far East in addition to our local followers. People got to know each other even when they had never met in person, even across continents and oceans. When one was down, others reached to help out, often outside of the shows. In the end, we all became family.”
The Corona Family has reached out to help others as well. It raised over $5,000 with fundraisers for Lebanon and for India COVID Relief with Oxfam-Quebec, as well as with separate private efforts on behalf of ailing local musicians. “Besides echoing our own government’s health care announcements at the beginning of each show, we have directly confronted the scourge of racism and done awareness concerts for ALS and Arachnoiditis and sharing petitions and spreading news of new treatments for these awful diseases,” he explains. “ In April 2021 we even interviewed Dr. Forrest Tennant, the world’s foremost expert on Arachnoiditis – and the expert witness called in the medical inquests into the deaths of Howard Hughes and Elvis- during the concert program. Because that awful disease is massively under diagnosed, many listeners were able to get help as a result of this broadcast.”
In sheer technical terms, Edwin has been able to achieve TV broadcast quality (using fve HD cameras, studio quality microphones, special lighting effects and inserted video footage) during the third Corona Family Concert Series from November 2020 to July 2021.
The 134th and final Corona Family Concert will be on Saturday July 24 at 7 pm. Montreal time. “The friendships made during these trying times are profound and real, Edwin says. “ I am without doubt that everyone who took part in this community will be able to look themselves in the eye in the mirror for the remainder of their lives and be able to say ‘I did the right thing during the pandemic.’ That’s because everyone in our Corona Family helped each other through this lonely time.
Every single concert may be seen online at: https://www.brownellmusic.com/live
By Mike Cohen
