Great Wallcast in Miami Beach

[Karl-G]

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Last Saturday we decided to check out the new New World Symphony Center in Miami Beach. This was designed by Frank Gehry as the home of the New World Symphony and just opened in January. The exterior is different from other Gehry buildings - it is a simple rectangle. The interior, including concert hall, rehearsal rooms, and lobbies/staircase, however, have the typical sweeping sensations. But we were interested in something special - the outside "wallcasts." The music director of the symphony is Michael Tilson Thomas, a close friend of Frank Gehry.

 

On some occasions, while a concert is being given indoors, it is also photographed and then projected on an outside wall of the concert house over an area of 7,000 square feet. And it is free. There is a large slightly sloping lawn outside where people start assembling more than an hour in advance, with blankets and lawn chairs and picnic hampers and wine and special culinary treats and candles for outdoor picnic dinners in a festive manner. Someone said this was like a tailgate party for music lovers. There is a system of large pipes containing hundreds of speakers around the two long sides. The evening was balmy, 76 degrees. There are 2.5 acres of lawn and about 2000 people can gather. As it got dark, the conductor first appeared on the wall, six stories high, and told a little about the evening's concert. Then they had a film clip interview with the first soloist. The concert featured various concertos, beginning with French horn.

 

Then the concert began. It was wonderful! The sound was the best, fullest, clearest, richest I have ever heard outdoors. There was no hollowness or missing instruments or dead holes, but you felt as if you were inside the sound. Palm treets swayed around the side, but everyone was hushed for the entire concert. The applause outside was greater than the applause inside at the end. With the huge wall to project on, a number of new tricks could be employed visually. There was not the continuous cutting from camera to camera which PBS seems to like. When the horn interacts with the flute, you could have closeups of the horn player on one side of the huge screeen (100 feet long) and a closeup of the flute player on the other side. At times there were closeups of his fingers, and the finger nails would be 10 feet long. There is tremendous clarity, as good as HD tv these days. They have new technology, and it works brilliantly. There are four projectors in a tower 2/3 of the way up the slope, but there are not four images nor any overlapping visible. I have not seen a technical explanation of the technology yet, but it was developed by a Dutch company and it seemed to work superbly.

 

For now, they will do a free wallcast concert every three weeks - they still need people to buy tickets and come inside for concerts. But starting next Wednesday, they are going to be projecting free movies on the wall every week. First will be "Avator," then "Moulin Rouge," and all fairly recent movies for three months. I did not see a sponsor for these, so I am not sure how they are doing it. But it looks like a lot of fun. All of this is only half a block from Lincoln Road, which is the center of tourist Miami Beach and which is home to dozens of outdoor cafes and art galleries. The whole atmosphere and evening were exciting, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. An area of Miami Beach which until recently had been dark and rather forbidding at night, is now the "in" place to be with lots of people and a beautiful new concert hall and park. It was a lot of fun, and I would highly recommend that if you are in the area, be sure and stop by and enjoy one of the wallcasts. This is surely the way of the future.

 

[The New York Times devoted three articles to the new hall and has a lot of excellent pictures of the inside and out, as well as of a wallcast. I will go and look them up and include them in the next post.]

[Karl-G]

Miami Beach - New World Symphony

 

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I found four articles from the Times and dozens of wonderful pictures.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/arts/design/24gehry.html

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/arts/music/27open.html

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/arts/music/28new.html

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/arts/music/31park.html

[gtx1]

Sounds like a great experience! I'm from So Fla so I'll have to check it out!