“The line forms at twilight outside of an empty San Francisco warehouse. Tickets are scanned as guests walk through a dimly lit passageway leading to a bar. But the 500 or so people are not waiting for a rock concert,” reports Jamie Wax on Saturday (1/7) at CBS News. “They’re in for a very different kind of experience: SoundBox—an annual 10-concert series that runs from December through April at the San Francisco Symphony…. The program is divided into three sections of about 25 minutes each, with two 20-minute intermissions. Each act features a piece of music spanning centuries of compositions. It’s aided by a multimedia light display and the Meyer Sound Constellation system …” Says San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, “It’s been very surprising for us that the attention of the audience in this situation, in fact, has been more focused, more quiet, more attentive than many of the ‘regular’ subscription concerts.” Also covered in the report are performance formats of the Miller Theatre at Columbia University’s Pop-Up concert series and the International Contemporary Ensemble, as well as the influence of Amazon’s TV series Mozart in the Jungle, which focuses on a professional orchestra.
Posted January 9, 2017
Pictured: The San Francisco Symphony and Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas in a SoundBox performance. Photo by Stefan Cohen
