New World Symphony announces upcoming season and new mobile wall
For local residents who’ve never yet made it to one of the New World Symphony’s legendary Wallcasts or sat inside its New World Center home, the music is coming to you.
The symphony Friday announced its 2021-2022 season, along with a new mobile wall that will project live concerts in neighborhoods across Miami. The 9-by-16-foot projection wall and a state-of-the-art sound system will be unveiled this fall. Neighborhoods are yet to be determined.
“This continues our vision of sharing classical music with as many people as possible,” said Howard Herring, New World Symphony president and CEO.
The mobile wall celebrates the 10-year anniversary of the New World Center, the Frank Gehry-designed concert hall and campus notable for its first-of-a-kind external projection wall and sound system that has allowed thousands of concert-goers to experience the symphony from picnic blankets and lawn chairs in SoundScape Park.
The concerts’ popularity — typically drawing about 2,000 people — sparked the idea for a mobile version. The Wallcasts kicked off again in February after pandemic cancellations and have remained a popular, socially distanced outdoor gathering. “It’s instant community building,” Herring said.
It’s also a natural progression for what started out as a television screen and speakers above the lobby door of the Lincoln Center, which originally housed the New World Symphony. The little screen began to draw so many casual strollers on Lincoln Road — many of them previously unaware of the live orchestra inside the center — that it didn’t take long before the symphony had to set up chairs and a projector outside.
When the symphony moved to the New World Center on 17th Street just west of Washington Avenue in 2011, the free Wallcasts caught on just as quickly. Crowds soon swelled to such a point that you could hardly see the patches of grass outside the center.
The outdoor projections allowed the symphony to tap into a second — and larger — audience, Herring said. He hopes the mobile wall will bring the same enthusiasm to new neighborhoods around the county.
“We believe this will be a natural digital bridge to the moment when we will all be together,” Herring said.
Live concerts for the 2021-2022 season will kick off in September. By summer’s end, as COVID-19 limitations allow, the symphony will determine seating capacity. For ticket and viewing information visit nws.edu.
This story has been updated. A previous version misidentified the New World Center’s location. The center’s address is 500 17th Street, Miami Beach, FL.
This story was originally published May 10, 2021 at 1:25 PM.