“Chicago has its Civic Orchestra, Miami Beach its New World Symphony. Each is an innovative incubator of gifted young instrumentalists on the fast track to professional careers in symphony orchestras across the nation,” writes John von Rhein in Monday’s (10/21) Chicago Tribune. “The New World Symphony also functions as a kind of high-tech music education laboratory…. The stimulating concert [Music Director Michael Tilson] Thomas and his young charges presented for their local debut Saturday night at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance … proved how far imaginative programming and novel presentation can go…. This is what the orchestra of tomorrow could and should sound like…. The concert was built around the Chicago premiere of the late Italian composer Niccolo Castiglioni’s ‘Inverno In-ver’ (1973), complete with a striking video installation devised by Thomas and British director and video artist Netia Jones…. Three clusters of video screens were hung above and at the sides of the stage to display fluid, close-up images of snowflakes, snowscapes and, at one point, the silhouette of a human figure tumbling from screen to screen, accompanied by piercing blasts of woodwinds. It was all extremely effective: The visual and aural elements enhanced rather than detracted from each other.”
Posted October 21, 2013
