New World Center

The New World Center is Frank Gehry's concert hall for the New World Symphony, opened in 2011 on the edge of Lincoln Road in South Beach. From the outside it is a white box — deliberately modest compared to Gehry's more flamboyant buildings — but the interior is one of the most technically advanced concert spaces in the world, with moveable acoustic panels and projection capabilities that allow for unusual audio and visual performances.

SoundScape Park, the green lawn on the building's south side, hosts regular free outdoor projections of concerts and other performances onto the hall's exterior wall. On a warm Miami evening with the projections running, this is one of the genuinely enjoyable free experiences the city offers. The hall itself runs a full concert season from October through May; tickets are reasonably priced given the quality.

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The New World Symphony — the resident orchestra of this hall — was founded in 1987 by conductor Michael Tilson Thomas as a training academy for exceptional young musicians who have already completed conservatory education. It is the only full-time professional orchestral academy in the United States. The hall's glass walls allow passersby to watch rehearsals from outside, and the south wall serves as a projection screen for outdoor concerts in SoundScape Park.

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