The Knight-funded New World Symphony opened its new performance space in Miami Beach last week, to great reviews for both the music and the Frank Gehry-designed building. Here Knight’s Dennis Scholl offers his thoughts.

What if the alphabet ended at m?

It does at the New World Symphony’s new venue.  No seat is higher that row 13!

I’ve just spent my third night there this week for the grand opening festivities. The space is a triumph.  The rake of the seating is quite steep, bringing the audience ever so closer to Michael Tilson Thomas’ active conducting on the stage. But I think my favorite aspect of the new, intimate 700-seat venue is the sound. It is big, bold and beautiful. It almost seems to hover above the orchestra in a shimmering cloud.

Another innovation that works beautifully are the aeries in the upper four corners of the hall. Knight Conducting Fellow Teddy Abrams got the honor of leading the first performance using these positions, where the musicians set up far above the main orchestra in small groups. The sound surprises, causing the viewer to search the hall for its origin, as it slowly enters into the listener’s consciousness.

The accompanying video effort by Tal Rosner seemed somewhat disconnected from the premier of the Thomas Adés piece Polaris. But the true potential of the melding of video and classical music was shown on Saturday night as 13 USC film and animation students took on Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition to good effect.

Their effort worked with the music to take the audience on a roller coaster ride of visuals, while still allowing the music to lead the way. This is the future of this new unidentified “multimedia” art form, which Knight has helped forward with more than $5 million in support to New World. I can’t wait until this community’s visual artists are given a crack at making work specifically for the venue.

The symphony should be commended for taking this game-changing risk.

Seeing 82-year-old starchitect Frank Gehry this week, beaming like a proud father was worth the price of admission. His long-standing relationship with Artistic Director Michael Tilson Thomas allowed them to think deeply about the symphony’s programmatic needs and how a building could serve them. Heady stuff, and a page-turner for Miami as it continues to realize its dream of being the city of the future.

Looking at Miami Beach’s 1111 parking structure, the New World building, the upcoming Miami Art Museum and Miami Museum of Science building, the continual maturation of the Arsht Center and the strong breakout efforts of Miami’s artist community, the city continues to demand to be reckoned with as a cultural destination.

In lieu of my pontificating on what this new performance space mean to classical music, I will refer you to the link to Phillip Kensington’s review for the Washington Post.

Of all the reviews this week, and there have been many, his thoughtful analysis speaks volumes as to why this new space flips the industry upside down—and why Miami is now the place for the international cognoscenti to hear (and see) classical music.