On a Friday evening in January at the New World Center in Miami Beach, the clock struck 2:32 p.m.
At the entrance of the grandiose building, colorfully dressed, masked ushers greeted guests and handed out masks. The sounds of a clock ticking and suspenseful music welcomed participants as they walked past other masked guests. Red lights danced around the room before they were welcomed to a most unusual “party.”
“The Clock Strikes 2:32 p.m.” is an experimental symphony performance created by a New World Symphony fellow. It’s inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death,” which takes the reader through the raucous party of the young aristocrat Prince Prospero as he tries to use his privilege and wealth to avoid the “red death” plague that is claiming the lives of those outside. The story reveals, however, that wealth and status can’t protect someone from death.
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As the guests settled in their seats at the New World Center, a disembodied voice read the opening lines of the story before, on a large screen above the stage, Prince Prospero welcomed the audience to his secluded abby. A young harpist then invited the crowd into a calm with soft almost piano-like tones.
First-year fellow and primary harpist Eloïse Fares is the artist behind the horror-infused story. The 28-year-old wanted to bring people into a thrilling story through sound and visuals, so she took the opportunity through the educational orchestra’s BLUE project performances to create something that she had not had the resources to accomplish before.
“I wanted to create something more abstract maybe with the words, something more poetic and something a bit more philosophical, something that will give you a reflection after the performance,” Fares told WLRN.
Although inspired by the scenes Poe created in his 1842 short story, she wanted to make something completely her own. Aside from a few lines, all the visuals and words throughout were created by Fares and other fellows who helped her during the creative process.
Back in the performance, the calm of the harp does not last. The music progressively becomes eerie and unsettled. The lighting changes colors to blue and purple. A streak goes across the screens above the stage, and the room is blanketed with red.
“I had this idea of the thin red line that represents the continuity of life, but also the color of the red which is blood and represents death,” Fares said. The streak that crosses the stage is created by small text – 2:32p.m. The arbitrariness of this precise time of death aims to show that no matter where or when, death will make its entrance.
The screens above the room change to varying colors with each song to echo the different colorful rooms in Poe’s story. The musicians speed and slow, speed and tense, like they are scoring a chase scene in a horror movie. The cellist scrapes against his instrument at the finale, mimicking the uneasy sound of a heart slowly stopping. The party is over. Death has come.
Fares said she was inspired by films and stories from her childhood. Her mother had told her about the American horror classic, The Exorcist, and the face of death it depicts. She said she was also moved by mystery stories like “The Mystery of the Yellow Room” by Gaston Leroux and stories that focused on elements of time like the animated film “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.”
The BLUE projects
Fares’ ambitious project is just the kind of creativity New World Symphony is designed to facilitate.
The harpist is one of 87 fellows at the Symphony, which is an orchestral academy. All of them have to participate in an original BLUE project performance – BLUE stands for build, learn, understand and experiment – but not every fellow has to be the lead. This season there are 8 performance projects being held at the New World Center. Eloise’s was the 4th.
Felice Doynov, 33, the associate dean of visiting faculty and entrepreneurship at New World Symphony, is responsible for guiding the fellows through their BLUE projects. She said the Symphony aims to subvert people’s expectations of what a classical music experience can be.
“ It's a place where [young musicians] can ask, ‘What kind of artist do I want to be, and also how do I want my artistic voice to exist in the world?’ They're about experimentation, they're about leadership, and they're also about translating someone's personal curiosity into meaningful artistic experiences,” Doynov said.
Who goes to the symphony anymore?
Howard Herring, the retiring president and CEO of the New World Symphony, said that working with experimentation and creativity towards the future of classical music – in ways that young musicians like Fares tend to do – has been his main goal.
How the classical music world is going to evolve was always top of mind for him and the symphony’s co-founder, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, he said.
“ What will this institution be in 2030?” Herring said. “So we were looking that far out. 25 or 30 years out. What would the art form be? What would the audience be? What would be required of a musician at that moment in time, and how would the interaction be organized between musician and audience?”
He said the answer to those questions led New World Symphony to the experimental and multimedia curriculum and performances it has today. Herring is a classically trained pianist and noted that the vast majority of people who go to the symphony usually have some kind of musical training themselves.
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“ Those who didn't play as kids, those who are less aware of the power of the music, they don't often come. So if they're not gonna come, they're not gonna find it,” Herring said. “That leaves us with the job of creating experiences that will be so inviting and so engaging.”
That’s where free WALLCAST concerts and other free events come in. Herring said that their monthly subscription is also supposed to help younger audiences or audiences of a lower income bracket to come to more performances more often and figure out what kind of performances are for them. New World’s goal is not to turn non-classical music fans into whatever kind of person they think they have to be to go to the symphony.
“On any given night, we will have people in their shorts and we’ll have people with a tie. So it's a broad range of people,” Herring said.
As the Oscar nominated actor Timothée Chalamet faces online backlash for his comments about classical forms of art like opera and ballet becoming outdated, classically trained artists continue to find new ways to move beyond such critiques.
A night at a the modern symphony
Artists like Fares and the other Symphony fellows are among these burgeoning artists who don’t see people’s views of classical music as barriers, but as new opportunities.
At Fares’ performance, the crowd scattered outside the concert hall and back into the atrium after the musicians bowed. The buzz was louder than before. People were emotional, ecstatic, confused and elated. A mix of ages and outfits blurred through the room.
The performers came out to greet the audience and the audience eagerly awaited them. Srivishnu Ramankutty, 28, was on the viola for one of the songs played and also played Prince Prospero. Like all the performers that night, he is a New World Symphony fellow.
“It's offering a different kind of sensory experience within the format of classical music,” Ramankutty said about Fares’ performance.
Ramunkutty will be leading his project “Devotion Meets The Symphony" on March 18. He said his performance aims to mix sacred devotional music from India with Western classical music to show the audience that these two “genres” are not as different as they may think.
“Concerts like this offer a chance for an audience to experience maybe a more grim side to music, to experience more of a storytelling aspect of the music, to experience the reality that music communicates every facet of life. That it's not just… it's not boring,” Ramankutty said.
