Fine music and fine wine in harmony

Concert set to drench the senses

Certain foods enhance the taste of wine. Why can’t music do the same?

That’s the idea that Hilary Glen, a cellist with the New World Symphony, promotes with her unusual event, “Heard it Through the Grapevine.”

Set for Friday at the New World Center in Miami Beach, the one-night-only concert for the senses will pair different sounds of music with varying flavors of wine.

“I’m really hoping the audience is

excited about going into this exploration with me, finding new ways to look at music and wine,” said Glen, who received a doctoral degree from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in New York. “Usually you drink wine and listen to music in the background, so this is really bringing both to the forefront.”

The New World Symphony is an elite training academy that for 29 years has prepared young graduate musicians for leadership roles by giving them threeyear fellowships. Every year, fellows submit event ideas, from which two are selected and produced.

Glen will host the evening, encouraging the audience to make the connection between taste, sound and history. She said she was inspired by several studies that have shown melodies, rhythms and genre can affect the way people taste or even buy wine.

A 2011 study published in The British Journal of Psychology, for example, found that people who drank wine while listening to “Carmina Burana,” by Carl Orff, described their drink as “powerful and heavy,” while a group listening to the calmer “Waltz of the Flowers“by Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky called the same wine “subtle and refined.”

During the show, an orchestra of 87 musicians will perform classical and bluegrass music, with Dean Whiteside as the conductor. The first five wines will be matched with specific pieces of music chosen by Glen. The last tasting will have two songs dedicated to it, so people can judge which melody made the wine taste better.

The audience will receive small tasting portions. However, all the wines tasted at the show will be sold in full glasses during a post-concert reception, in which attendees can also interact with the musicians.

“I think I’m probably most excited about the last pairing of the evening. They will get to experience how the wine changes [depending on the music],” Glen said. “I put that last because I wanted to start a conversation for the post-concert reception.”

Master Sommelier Virginia Philip chose the wines for the night. In 2002, the owner of the Virginia Philip Wine Shop and Academy in West Palm Beach was the 11th woman in the world to become a master sommelier. That year, she also earned the American Sommelier Association’s title of “Best Sommelier in the United States.”

She will accompany Glen throughout the night, giving insights and information about the wines. Music, she said, isn’t the only variable that influences people’s perceptions of the drink.

“You could drink a great bottle in your house with someone you really enjoy, and then open that bottle again and not have the same experience,” Philip said.

“Sometimes it is driven by who you were with, where you were and what you were doing,” Philip added. “I like to use that example of people who go to Italy or go to France, and they drank the local cafe wine, and thought it was fabulous, and ordered six bottles or a case.

“They bring it home and find it’s not what they thought it was.”