For the first time since the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center opened on 17th Street, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is on the program, and anyone with a blanket and a patch of lawn in SoundScape Park can hear it for free. The New World Symphony will project its Saturday, Oct. 10 performance live onto the building's 7,000-square-foot exterior wall at 7:30 p.m., opening the 2026-27 WALLCAST season with a concert dedicated to Michael Tilson Thomas, the conductor who co-founded the orchestra in Miami Beach and died this spring.

A Season Opener Built Around a Founder

Tilson Thomas started the New World Symphony in 1987 with Ted and Lin Arison, led it as artistic director until 2022 and then took the title of artistic director laureate. The orchestra says he died at home on April 22, 2026, with family and friends around him. This weekend is the first time the orchestra's full forces, plus a chorus and four vocal soloists, will gather on its home stage to mark that loss in public.

The program is arranged as a tribute rather than a standard symphony night. It opens with Notturno, a roughly 14-minute piece Tilson Thomas composed in 2004, featuring flutist Demarre McGill. Next comes the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, the slow movement for strings and harp that runs about 11 minutes. After a 20-minute intermission, Artistic Director Stéphane Denève leads Beethoven's Ninth, about 65 minutes, with soprano Ellie Dehn, mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, tenor Sean Panikkar, baritone Dashon Burton and the Master Chorale of South Florida, prepared by chorus master Brett Karlin.

That last detail is the surprise. According to the orchestra's own concert page, this is the first time the Ninth, with its choral finale built on the Ode to Joy, will be heard in the building. Choosing that piece to honor the man whose name is on the performance hall is a deliberate statement about what the orchestra thinks he built.

How the Wall Works

A WALLCAST is not a recording or a delayed stream. The concert happening inside the Michael Tilson Thomas Performance Hall is projected live onto the wall facing the park, with the orchestra's own audio and video system carrying it across the lawn, so people outside hear the music at the same moment the ticket holders inside do. The projection surface is larger than most movie screens, which is part of why a night on the grass can feel closer to the stage than a seat in the back of a hall.

There are no tickets and no reservations for the park. The orchestra recommends bringing a chair, a blanket or a picnic. Public restrooms are open in the southeast corner of the park during each concert, and live closed captions can be pulled up on a phone at nws.edu/captions or through the NWS app once you arrive.

Regulars can also join the WALLCAST Concert Club at the sign-up table in the park. Checking in at three concerts earns a pair of tickets to an indoor New World Symphony performance; checking in at seven earns a tote bag and an invitation to a rooftop reception with the Fellows and artistic staff. Saturday is the first of seven WALLCAST dates this season, so it is the one night a newcomer can still reach all seven.

Getting There This Weekend

Plan around a street closure. The City of Miami Beach has temporarily closed part of 17th Street between Washington Avenue and Convention Center Drive. The orchestra says the 17th Street Garage, the Pennsylvania Garage and the New World Center itself remain reachable from Lincoln Lane North, which is the simplest way in from Lincoln Road.

For anyone who would rather be inside, the concert runs in the hall at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and again at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 11, with a pre-concert talk at 6:30 p.m. Saturday. Those seats are ticketed through the NWS box office. The orchestra is also streaming the Saturday performance online for people who cannot make it to South Beach.

The Rest of the Lawn Calendar

The park will be busy again on Thursday, Oct. 15, when a free Miami Beach Culture Crawl WALLCAST loops from 7 to 9 p.m. It pairs Denève and the Fellows in Gershwin's An American in Paris with former NWS pianist Shih-Man Weng playing Gershwin's I Got Rhythm, filmed at The Underline's Brickell Backyard.

The full WALLCAST schedule, as posted by the orchestra, continues on Nov. 21 with Prokofiev's violin concerto, Dec. 12 with Brahms' Third, Dec. 19 with a holiday program called Sounds of the Season, Jan. 30 with Ravel and Stravinsky, Feb. 20 with Mahler's First and May 1 with Gershwin, John Adams and Guillaume Connesson.

Why the Lawn Matters Here

The New World Symphony is a training orchestra. Its 87 Fellows are recent conservatory graduates who stay for up to three years, chosen from more than 1,000 applicants competing for roughly 30 openings a year, and the academy counts more than 1,300 alumni now playing in orchestras around the world. The people on stage Saturday are, in many cases, the principal players of the next decade.

The wall was Tilson Thomas's argument that this kind of music belongs to everyone who lives near it, not only to people who buy a seat. Saturday is the clearest test of that idea the park has had: a founder's own composition, a piece of music written about shared humanity, and a free lawn a few blocks from Lincoln Road. If you live in South Beach, Mid-Beach or anywhere a short ride over the causeway, this is the night to claim a square of grass early.