Miami hosts the most important piano competition in America, and nobody even bothers to charge admission.  Nobody charges because aside from a few hundred stalwarts, nobody bothers to go. The crowds at Art Basel, a week dedicated not so much to culture as to its parody, grow like an outbreak of Ebola Zaire; the crowds at Ultra, a reborn Gomorrah on the Bay, throng (when they’re not overdosing or being trampled); at the last Chopin Competition, Eric Lu played the E minor concerto with heartbreaking touch to a half-empty auditorium. If the people of Miami knew how to feel shame (hint: we do not), we ought to blush at that.

The Festival draws music luminaries from all over the world.  Happily, when someone famous agrees to play, his concert is better attended, as Miamians love to be seen at events others assure them are important.  Last Festival, pianist-composer-painter-poet Stephen Hough, one of the most eccentric, literary, and memorable of the great pianists of recent memory, played to a standing-room crowd in the Gables. A few of the old ladies in the front row got to relive their youth, cooing over Mr. Hough with the same ardor they lavished on Elvis a half century earlier.

Only the very wise can explain why a town in which it is socially permissible to answer the phone with “we doing chest and arms today bro?” has so much piano. We host the Dranoff International duo teams and competitions.  We host the Chopin. We host Rachmaninoff (not anymore, because that would be gross, but he played for Miami Civic in the thirties). If you’re reading this before March of 2016, know that we *will* host Emmanuel Ax, who promises to lay down the law with Beethoven’s fifth (and best!) piano concerto. He’ll play with the charming and talented fellows of the New World Symphony. I’ll see you there.