New World Symphony premieres Project 305 Crowdsourced MIAMI IN MOVEMENTS, 10/21

Project 305, a nearly yearlong project to crowdsource a symphony and accompanying film about Miami by its residents, will culminate in a free concert celebrating the diversity of Miami-Dade County and the power of music on Saturday, October 21, 7:30 PM at the New World Center (500 17th Street). The project is a collaboration of the New World Symphony, America's Orchestral Academy (NWS), Knight Foundation, the MIT Media Lab and Miami-Dade County.

The crowdsourced work, composed by TEd Hearne with an accompanying film by Jonathan David Kane, is titled Miami in Movements. The title not only alludes to the work's six-movement structure, but also pays homage to the variety of cultures and influences that have moved through and contributed to Miami-Dade County's identity over time.

Miami in Movements will be conducted by NWS Artistic Director Michael Tilson Thomas and performed by the New World Symphony to close the concert, immediately preceded by George Gershwin's Cuban Overture. The first half of the concert will feature performances by Miami-based musical ensembles, including Picadillo - with vocalists Sol Ruiz and Rey Rodríguez - and the Barry Bucaneiros, a Brazilian drumming ensemble from Barry University.

The concert will be streamed via Facebook Live and projected onto the 7,000-square foot front wall of the New World Center as a WALLCAST concert, presented by Citi, for audiences in the adjacent SoundScape Park. Audiences online and at the Park will not only experience the new work's accompanying film, but will also see live video from the concert hall integrated throughout. To watch the performance on Facebook Live, follow the New World Symphony on Facebook at facebook.com/NewWorldSymphony.

Prior to the start of the WALLCAST concert, a brass ensemble from Miami Music Project and a jazz/rock combo from Young Musicians Unite will perform on the plaza of SoundScape Park, in front of the New World Center.

Also prior to the concert, two backstage tours of the New World Center will bring guests behind-the-scenes of NWS' campus, and a virtual reality experience, shot and produced by Yellow Wood using 360-degree cameras, will transport audiences to seven distinct Miami neighborhoods. The virtual reality portion of the event can be experienced in-person through VR headsets at the New World Center or accessed remotely via users' cell phones or desktop computers via Project305.org, and will allow them to explore neighborhoods that may be familiar or new to them, showcasing distinct parts of Miami that will enrich their understanding of the city and their experience of the crowdsourced symphony. WLRN's Tom Hudson will moderate a pre-concert chat in the New World Center's SunTrust Pavilion with composer TEd Hearne and filmmaker Jonathan David Kane at 6:15 PM, allowing participants to hear from the artists responsible for incorporating hundreds of audio and video submissions into the final work.

The project is modeled after the collaborative City Symphonies created throughout the world by innovative and influential composer Tod Machover at the MIT Media Lab. With a vision for blending technology, music and culture, and for boldly building community, Mr. Machover has produced these works in cities as diverse as Lucerne and Perth, and was brought to Detroit and the United States by Knight Foundation. New World Symphony is now partnering with Knight Foundation and the MIT Media Lab on Project 305, the first city symphony project to include crowdsourced video.

"Technology has changed the way we live our lives and experience our communities," said Victoria Rogers, VP/Arts at Knight Foundation. "With Project 305, we're seeing how it can be fundamental to the artistic process. The initiative invited Miamians to participate in a creative experience with the tools they carry with them every day - their phones and mobile devices. We're excited to see and hear how those micro-moments of sound and video people recorded were used to create a symphonic picture of Miami."

Tickets not required to attend WALLCAST concerts in SoundScape Park. For more information about the program, visit NWS.edu/Project305 or call 305-673-3331.

Composer, singer, and bandleader TEd Hearne (b.1982, Chicago) draws on a wide breadth of influences ranging across music's full terrain, to create intense, personal, and multi-dimensional works. The New York Times has praised Mr. Hearne for his "tough edge and wildness of spirit" and "topical, politically sharp-edged works." Pitchfork called Mr. Hearne's work "some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory - from any genre." Mr. Hearne's recent theatrical work, The Source, sets text from the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs, along with words by Chelsea Manning (the U.S. Army private who leaked those classified documents to WikiLeaks) and was premiered to rave reviews in October 2014 at the BAM Next Wave Festival in Brooklyn. The New York Times called The Source "a 21st-century masterpiece" and included it on its list of the best classical vocal performances of 2014 and best albums of 2015, noting that the work "offers a fresh model of how opera and musical theater can tackle contemporary issues: not with documentary realism, but with ambiguity, obliquity, and even sheer confusion." The Source was performed last season at the LA Opera and San Francisco Opera. Web site: tedhearne.com

Jonathan David Kane (b.1984, Miami) combines light and sound to convey narratives. Over the past decade, he has contributed to numerous fiction, documentary, and experimental short and feature films, series content for television and the web, and interdisciplinary performance art. Mr. Kane's work as a film director, producer, and cinematographer has screened at festivals and museums worldwide including Sundance, SXSW, Toronto International, Rotterdam, Sheffield Doc Fest, Clermont-Ferrand, the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, the MoMA in New York, and the Brooklyn Museum. Web site: jonathandavidkane.com.

Tod Machover (b. 1953, New York) has been called a "musical visionary" by The New York Times and "America's most wired composer" by the Los Angeles Times. He is Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music & Media at the MIT Media Lab, where he also directs the Opera of the Future Group. Mr. Machover is widely recognized as one of the world's most significant and innovative composers, and is also celebrated for inventing new technology for music, including Hyperinstruments that expand expressivity and creativity for both virtuosi and amateurs, and video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, which grew out of this Lab. Mr. Machover's compositions have been commissioned and performed by many of the world's most prestigious ensembles and soloists, and his work has been awarded numerous prizes and honors worldwide, including a "Chevalier of Arts and Letters" from the French government, the inaugural Arts Advocacy Award from The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the award for "2016 Composer of the Year" by Musical America. He is particularly known for his groundbreaking operas, including the "robotic" Death and the Powers that was Finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. Web site: todmachover.com

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's belief in equitable, inclusive, and participatory communities has driven inventive and creative programs in Miami and other Knight cities. Through previous partnerships with the New World Symphony, the Knight Foundation has been instrumental in the development of innovative programming such as WALLCAST concerts, Pulse: Late Night at the New World Symphony, the annual Network Performing Arts Production Workshops (NPAPW), and video commissions and presentations at the New World Center. Web site: knightfoundation.org

Actively promoting a unique, antidisciplinary culture, the MIT Media Lab goes beyond known boundaries and disciplines, encouraging the most unconventional mixing and matching of seemingly disparate research areas. It creates disruptive technologies that happen at the edges, pioneering such areas as wearable computing, tangible interfaces, and affective computing. Today, faculty members, research staff, and students at the Lab work in 25 research groups on more than 350 projects that aim to radically improve the way people live, learn, express themselves, work, and play. In this spirit, future-obsessed roboticists, nanotechnologists, biologists, neuroscientists, data-visualization experts, industry researchers, pioneers of computer interfaces, and artist-designer activists work side by side to tirelessly invent-and reinvent-how humans experience, and can be aided by, technology, and to make sure that developments are deployed throughout the world for maximum benefit to individuals and societies. Web site: media.mit.edu

Additional information about the New World Symphony may be found online at NWS.edu.

 

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