New World Symphony in Miami Beach

Saturday night and Sunday day, Kevin's brother Craig was playing a concert with (while coaching the trumpet section of) the New World Symphony for their 25th season opening: The Russian Musical Soul. The first half was Stravinsky: the Circus Polka (1942) with a super cool animated film by Emily Eckstein, followed by Petrushka. The second half: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4.

Saturday night we sat outside on the lawn for the Wallcast, where the concert inside is projected onto a 7,000 square foot projection wall, and people bring picnics and wine and beach chairs and watch from outside (free, and a fantastic idea!). This was far better than we thought possible. The sound was fabulous, the audience seemed quieter than audiences typically are inside the hall, and the video and editing was meticulous and spot-on when it came to the solos, etc. Great idea!

You can get a feel for the scale if you look in the lower left corner at the size of the people. Also, that tall pillar to the left of the screen is a giant speaker.

There's Craig in the middle!

A little still from Emily's film that accompanied Circus Polka:

On Sunday we saw the same concert, but from inside the hall. The hall is gorgeous (Frank Gehry designed) and the sound was incredible. This is just inside the main entrance:

Also, the design of the upper interior surrounding the stage was a perfect place to project the film during Circus Polka, and it was much better to see it in full "surround view." This is kind of a bad iPhone photo before the performance…it shows the ceiling, and a little bit of the surrounding walls:

It's a great concert hall and was even better the second time. Craig took us upstairs with him while he talked for a few minutes (and introduced us) to Michael (Tilson Thomas), then we headed back downstairs via the roof deck. Nice view of Miami Beach from up there:

Here we're basically standing on the roof directly above the wall where the concert is broadcast, so you can get a good view of the park where we watched the night before:

We did a little drive around Miami Beach before heading home for a nice dinner at Craig & Karen's house.