How does an over-the-top iconoclast bust the mold? asked Christopher Hawthorne in the Los Angeles Times. By flirting with sober tradition. Instead of a cliché-ridden rehash of his bold signature style—the teetering, “shimmering metal skins” of Bilbao, Spain’s Guggenheim—Frank Gehry turned his aesthetic “inside out” for the New World Symphony’s $160 million concert hall and training center, a study in “deadpan restraint.” Well, the exterior, anyway: Inside this 100,000-square-foot Miami Beach marvel, the “soaring skylit atrium is filled with a jumble of the architect’s familiar sculptural forms,” giving the design “a shifting, unpredictable vitality.” In short, it’s a “Gehry building disguised as a shoebox.” In a city that has “perfected the art of aggressive displays of individual beauty—pneumatic, Botoxed, dyed, and otherwise”—this building is “content to focus on the richness of its interior life.”
“The big news” for music lovers nationwide is how that rich interior life is allowed to break through the building’s walls, said Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times. Two nights after catching a performance by the New World Symphony inside Gehry’s concert hall, I returned to hear the same program broadcast live into the adjoining park
as a free “Wallcast” concert. “Remember that name, Wallcast, because it is going to catch on.” Listeners outside not only watched “terrific live video” of the orchestra; we enjoyed a revolutionary speaker system—composed largely of a network of overhead horizontal tubes—that provided “the best outdoor amplification I have ever heard.” As a top training orchestra, the New World Symphony is well positioned to make the most of its new home’s versatility, said James S. Russell in Bloomberg​.com. Thanks in part to Gehry, the ensemble has “an extraordinary opportunity to invent classical music’s future.”
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
No Kings rally: What did it achieve?Feature The latest ‘No Kings’ march has become the largest protest in U.S. history
-
Bolton indictment: Retribution or justice?Feature Trump’s former national security adviser turned critic, John Bolton, was indicted for mishandling classified information after publishing his ‘tell-all’ memoir
-
Chicago: Scenes from a city under siegeFeature Chicago is descending into chaos as masked federal agents target people in public spaces and threaten anyone who tries to document the arrests
