In Thursday’s (2/10) Los Angeles Times, Mark Swed writes, “The Los Angeles Philharmonic announced on Monday a new season of unprecedented ambition.” After discussing the wide-ranging repertoire for the coming season, Swed writes, “Gustavo Dudamel has signed an extension on the lease of his dressing room in Walt Disney Concert Hall until 2018-19. … Other groundbreaking classical music news of late has been January’s opening of the New World Center in Miami Beach, home to Michael Tilson Thomas’ New World Symphony and designed by Disney Hall architect Frank Gehry. Outside, concerts can be projected on the façade of the building. … These were once dreams for Disney Hall that the [Los Angeles] Music Center felt were too impractical, too expensive or simply too visionary. Well, after a visit to Miami, it’s clear they not only work but are being called a game-changing way for classical music to reach a wide public, and it is hardly too late to implement them. … Gehry selected the [Disney Hall] exterior steel specifically for its ‘filmic’ properties. He had anticipated that evening concerts inside would be projected on the building’s skin, which would have brought a whole new visual bling to downtown. … a fully realized Disney Hall would be a real 3-D avatar of a 21st-century metropolis.”
Posted February 10, 2011
