Culture Comes to Your Quarntine

Thanks to sophistcated technology and artistic commitment, you can fill your home with music, art and even resume writing

For one musical collaboration occurring well before the current worldwide pandemic, New World Symphony fellows were working with the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, remembers Howard Herring, NWS president. The 17 miles of fiber the organization had installed in New World Center – in anticipation of the company’s electronic needs in 2040 – we’re hard at work. NWS knew back in 2002 — when constructing New World Center — it would need a concert hall with the capabilities to create an artistic expression that would in both sight and sound broadcast a complete electronic experience.

“The most dramatic statement,” recalls Herring, “came from one fellow who said, ‘I thought I’d never trust the teacher in Copenhagen, but I realized we were working in the third room.’ And she held her hand up and wiggled fingers in this imagine space.”
Now, that all the world has seemingly shut down, internet cables are working to full capacity and the New World Symphony is broadcasting from an electronic universe it worked tirelessly to create.

“We understood early on the power of the digital internet – one to one – and the ability to go back and forth, at the highest level of sight and sound — could make it seem you were there,” says Herring. “The level of the bandwidth – to record video and audio and spin it across the fiber – would require a sophisticated transfer. And NWS even back then was determined to achieve it.”

What that means for both NWS fellows and the entire city today – wait, the entire world – is that it’s possible to watch the fellows perform as if you were there, in the concert hall.

For starters, the fellows – in bringing you solos and duos – are well rehearsed. Staying home, they’re taking lessons from esteemed instructors online. What’s more, NWS has the capability – if you’ve seen their lifelike wallcasts, you know – to webcast events. On Friday nights at 7 p.m. they’re hosting Live from the Living Room, which are solos and duets viewers can enjoy on their computers.

Meanwhile, this week, the Arsht Center went virtual with the launch of Arsht@Home, a new at-home online program made up of free educational and entertaining content. Go to their website arshtcenter.org/arshtathome for ways to increase your quarantine’s culture experience by learning to create art or to watch Miami’s most talented actors, singers and musicians perform.

“The arts are a vital part of all our lives and we at the Arsht Center take the responsibility very seriously,” says Johann Zietsman, president and CEO of the Arsht Center. “Despite this intermission from life as we know it, our staff has been diligently working on ways to keep our community connected to the performing arts.”

For example, local artists produced the “Art of Making,” a series of inspiring instructional videos featuring educational at-home arts activities. For example, Writer Darius V. Daughtry teaches how to create a poem based on a selfie while singer-songwriter Sara Gonzalez shows how to turn kitchen objects into musical instruments. For Living Room Live see performances by Shelly Berg — Dean of the Phillip and Patricia Frost School of Music at the University of Miami — and Verónica Herrera a Miami-based, Venezuelan singer-songwriter. Want to hone your corporate game? Arsht@Work will provide tips, links and professional development opportunities to ace that interview. And offer free, personalized resume and interview prep workshops.