The hills may be alive with music, but more than ever, so is flat Florida. It helps that musicians, same as music-lovers, love spending time here.


Florida Rings with Classical Music

 Only in the mid-1900s did classical music fully find its way to Florida. In 1940, an opera society formed in Miami, followed post-World War II by Miami's Friends of Chamber Music, the Palm Beach Opera and a Tampa Bay orchestra. Touring musicians began filling winter dates among them.

Then Judy Drucker's Miami Beach-based Concert Association of Florida broke through classical music's elite image with a performance by Pavarotti on the beach that attracted an audience of 200,000. The event continues to draw crowds to this day.

No surprise that classical music first struck a popular chord in Florida's wealthy population centers. An ear for music goes well with an eye for art and a palate for gourmet foods. "Patron of the arts" isn't just a fancy phrase for music lovers. All large performing companies need financial support beyond the box office and none more so than symphony orchestras, opera and ballet companies. Pavarotti may have overcome music's elite image but music itself still sidles up to wealth.


Miami's Sophisticated Music Scene

 All of this established Miami with its endless sophistications (and its tourism wealth) as Florida's premier musical hub. Underwritten by Carnival Cruise Line founder Ted Arison and his wife Lyn, Miami's chief performing group is the leading training orchestra in America, the New World Symphony. Led by charismatic San Francisco Symphony conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, the New World Symphony prepares musicians typically in their late teens and early 20s for America's leading orchestras. Performances at the Lincoln Theatre in Miami Beach range from symphonic works with their high-end tickets to chamber music programs that often feature modernist compositions and modest prices.

Southeast Florida is also home to the Miami International Piano Festival, which showcases pianists from around the world at halls in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Friends of Chamber Music regularly features stellar groups such as the Guarneri, Emerson and Cleveland Quartets.
All around the state, musical organizations recognize the need to build audiences.


In Tune with Gulf Coast Florida

Like southeast Florida, the state's lower west coast has added new esteem in the musical arts to its reputation for sumptuous beach resorts. Drawing on the patronage of Naples' sophisticated retired CEOs, former advertising executive Myra Janco Daniels championed the building of Naples' architecturally distinguished Philharmonic Center for the Performing Arts, followed by formation of Naples Philharmonic Orchestra to play "the Phil." The orchestra performs a nine-month season that often includes the Miami City Ballet and opera stars like Andrea Bocelli, Kiri Te Kanawa and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

Just north, the Southwest Florida Symphony in Fort Myers performs a five-month season around Lee County. The Sarasota Opera, in its 1,300-seat restored performance hall (located in one of the state's premier shopping districts) stages at least four operas each winter from its repertory of more than 70.

Tampa Bay's Florida Orchestra have performed the entire Beethoven symphony cycle and works by Bartok, Britten, Honegger and Mahler - works that refute what only cynics might still regard as Florida's propensity to "dumb things down." Spurring high ticket demand among visitors as well as locals, TFO's performance venues in St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Tampa are all close to popular beach resorts and their cities' nighttime entertainment districts and restaurant rows.


Music for the Masses

 All around the state, musical organizations recognize the need to build audiences. In mid-state Lakeland's fast-forward arts community, the Imperial Symphony Orchestra during Tea & Symphony programs prepares listeners for music scheduled each following week. ISO musicians sometimes perform excerpts during interactive audience sessions.

The Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra at Jacoby Hall in Jacksonville's resurgent downtown starts younger. Partially underwritten by the Jacksonville Jaguars-affiliated Weaver Family Foundation, classical music programs reach 100,000 Duval County schoolchildren a year.

Some cities go to extraordinary lengths to hear classical music. In "Margaritaville," members of the Key West Symphony fly in five days before performances from as far as San Francisco and Boston. Three times a winter, music in hand, they report for rehearsals, community outreach events, master classes and student concerts before Friday and Saturday programs at the Tennessee Williams Theatre.

Universities year 'round nurture music and music lovers. Florida State University in Tallahassee, the state capital, has a music faculty of 90 (including Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Taafe Zwilich) that performs public programs. The University of Miami sponsors Festival Miami each spring in Miami and Fort Lauderdale that features the faculty-led Bergonzi String Quartet, its civic chorale, symphonic band, chamber symphony and symphony orchestra.

Central Florida Community College hosts the Central Florida Symphony Orchestra at its Ocala campus in the midst of Florida horse country. The University of Florida brings international groups to arts-aware Gainesville, recently including the Juilliard, Kronos and Takacs String Quartets and the Pittsburgh and Prague Symphony Orchestras; all performances are open to the public, the same as student and faculty programs.


Small Towns, Big Sounds

 Classical music isn't just a big city thing, and modern works now get heard from one end of the state to the other. Near Florida's sugar-sand beaches, the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra performs works by some of the greatest names in music.

Melbourne, Cocoa Beach and resort towns up and down the Space Coast host performances of the Community Band of Brevard and the 40-member Space Coast Flute Orchestra. Mount Dora's annual Festival of Music & Literature set in central Florida's famed antiquing hub includes past performances by the Vols String Quartet, performing Shostakovich, Beethoven and Schubert and violinist Daniel Andai performing Bach, Beethoven and Paganini.

Many performances are affordable. In addition to chamber programs of the New World Symphony, in any season you might hear an all-Stravinsky chamber program at Orlando's Loch Haven Park or a program by the Emerson Quartet at Florida Atlantic University, each for less than $20. Listeners at Historic Bok Sanctuary in Lake Wales can picnic under the trees (and nights, lie under the stars) while listening to carillon concerts for only the site's $8 entry fee. Mount Dora's classical programs are $5 and $10, and many performances during the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival are altogether free.