A New Landmark:
Project Scope

Since opening to movie-going audiences in 1936, the Lincoln Theatre has been a familiar fixture in Miami Beach’s Art Deco District. Renovated during the early 1990’s, it served the New World Symphony well during the academy’s formative years. But the Lincoln Theatre now presents too many costly challenges in terms of space, acoustics, technological limitations and overall comfort to make it a viable home for NWS in the future.

The new campus offers a combination of practice rooms, rehearsal rooms, technology suites, and performance space, making possible activities ranging from one-on-one teaching to recording sessions to live webcasts, reaching a global audience. Our new home is a true music laboratory and will enable the New World Symphony to continue its role as the leader in integrating technology with music education and concert presentation.

NWS was the first arts organization to embrace the possibilities of Internet2, a broadband network 100,000 times faster than the Internet. Capable of producing CD quality sound and DVD quality images, Internet2 opens up the entire world of music to the Fellows—and vice versa. Artists and teachers whose commitments don’t allow for visits to Miami can lead real-time master classes. Composers a continent away can “sit in” on rehearsals of their work or lecture audiences before a performance. Fellows can share their virtuosity with young aspiring musicians in schools and conservatories from China to North Carolina. The creation and performance of classical music becomes a shared experience for students young and old around the world.

The New World Symphony campus will be Frank Gehry’s first commission in Florida, and promises to result in a new landmark for American culture, attracting global attention from architecture, art, and music aficionados alike.