The Miami Bach Society’s Tropical Baroque Festival, now in its 12th incarnation, continues through this weekend with concerts featuring Fuoco e Cenere (Fire and Ash), the French-based early music ensemble with the Italian name, founded by a guy from New York. Their two appearances Friday and Saturday (followed by another Sunday afternoon up north in […]

Starting Feb. 25, the SoBe Institute of the Arts begins its American Masterworks series, four programs that will include performances of a major modernist classic – George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children – as well as music by Michael Colgrass and a performance in December by the fine Canadian violinist Lara St. John. Friday’s concert […]

When it comes to the heart of music, it comes to sound – sheer sound, away from categories, away from genre, away from top-10 lists and opus numbers and Billboard charts. This weekend, the folks at New Music Miami host an American composer whose work has been about this fundamental aspect of the art of […]

This week and next, conductor James Judd will be auditioning musicians for his Miami Music Project Honors Orchestra, part of an effort he considers vital to the future of classical music. This coming Saturday, and on Feb. 20, the orchestra will be auditioning young players ages 13-21 for a concert March 26 at the Knight […]

In 2007, Knight Foundation granted $5 million to the New World Symphony to create the Knight Media Center, helping NWS capitalize on technology and explore new performance formats. Today, Knight Arts’ classical music journalist Greg Stepanich explores some of the initiatives created from the grant… The New World Center is a welcoming home to recording […]

It’s been quite a week for the symphonic arts in Miami. The New World Center opened Wednesday in Miami Beach with a new piece by Thomas Adès (Polaris: Voyage for Orchestra), and those who missed the world premiere (the New World Symphony’s program also includes the Copland Third Symphony and Wagner’s Flying Dutchman Overture) can […]

The first thing I thought when I walked into the new concert hall at the soon-to-open New World Symphony building was: This feels like a home. Taking a tour of the Frank Gehry-designed structure in Miami Beach earlier this week, I walked into the main hall expecting, vaguely, something imposing and palatial. But while the […]

When it comes to sheer popularity in classical music, it’s hard to beat the Carmina Burana of Carl Orff. Everyone knows the opening section of this work – O Fortuna – with its relentless, thumping D minor melody that barely rises above the first part of a scale, and its steady increase in volume and […]

Earlier this month, the composer Carlos Rafael Rivera sent along an MP3 of his Concierto de Miami, a trumpet concerto that had its premiere in late October with the great jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval as the soloist. I wasn’t able to attend the concert, so I’m grateful to Rivera for sending me the recording. This […]

It has been a very long time since any Christmas carolers came to my door, and even longer since I went myself, as a youngster. But I remember distinctly walking the frozen streets of our northern Illinois hometown, singing along with a group of people I think were from church or high school, or a […]