The New World Symphony. Exhilarating.

By Karen and Erica

Should you find yourself in Miami Beach, and should you be lucky enough to be there when the New World Symphony has scheduled a concert, immediately get tickets and go.

If you are not often in Miami Beach, chances are you have not even heard of the New World Symphony. It is a remarkable institution. 

Its mission:

The New World Symphony is where the future of orchestral music is envisioned, cultivated and shared.

Its history:

The New World Symphony, America’s Orchestral Academy (NWS), is where the future of orchestral music is envisioned, cultivated and shared. Since its co-founding in 1987 by Artistic Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas and Lin and Ted Arison, NWS has helped launch the careers of nearly 1,300 alumni worldwide. In fall 2022 Stéphane Denève was named Artistic Director of the New World Symphony.

A laboratory for the way music is taught, presented and experienced, the New World Symphony consists of young musicians who are granted fellowships lasting up to three years. The fellowship program offers in-depth exposure to traditional and modern repertoire, professional development training and personalized experiences working with leading guest conductors, soloists and visiting faculty. Relationships with these artists are extended through NWS’s extensive distance learning via the internet

At a NWS concert, you will see and hear the most amazing young musicians performing, with exuberance and expertise, under the aegis of a seasoned conductor, for the moment Stéphane Denève. Both he and his predecessor are effervescent in their devotion to this project, and watching this intergenerational orchestra perform is simply joyous. Often, another famous (older or younger) musician also performs. Recently John Adams conducted, in part, while the orchestra played some of his remarkable music, and extraordinary pianist Vikingur Olaffson offered a brilliant and moving homage to Frank Gehry, who designed the orchestra’s hall, the New World Center. 

Gehry’s soaring spaces seem especially appropriate for the Center, which was created in close collaboration with Michael Tilson Thomas. For a recent concert, soon after the death of Frank Gehry, the President and CEO described the process:

[The Cwnter] began with three years of institutional planning, as we imagined what we might become, followed by three years of design based on those plans. Finally, three years of construction brought us to the opening of the New World Center in January, 2011, on time and \on budget. Frank Gehry was clear in saying it was his most program-driven design, and it helped us step into the future.

As we celebrate the 15th anniversary of this facility, we also reflect on the passing of Frank Gehry. He gave us an environment that invites experimentation and speaks directly to our Fellows and the local and global community of music lovers. As the Miami music critic Sebastian Spreng described, “the partnership between Gehry and Tilson Thomas is the invisible architecture holding everything together. One shaped space; the other shaped time.

We have been impressed and thrilled for some time by this institution, and its intergenerational and global reach and goals. We thrill also to the joy that permeates every experience we have had with the symphony. For us, it is a shining example of what we can achieve when older and younger people work together, sharing expertise on the one h and and  energy and flair on the other, rejoicing that they can be part of an amazing project. 

We salute the New World Symphony and those who brought it into being. The world is richer for it.