Going Digital

Find Esprit Online

A printed magazine is perfect for relaxing reading over breakfast or on the bus, while a digital magazine makes it easy to search for and share your favorite articles. Today’s readers expect their content to be available in both forms, and we know that CFA alumni are no exception. That’s why the College is now providing Esprit in hard copy and digital formats.

Beginning with this Spring 2012 issue, the articles in your print copy of Esprit are also available online, enhanced with additional links, photos, videos, and reader comments.

CFA Launches Virtual Concert Hall

By Amy Sutherland

When Melanie Burbules (’14) walked onto the stage of Symphony Hall last spring to perform in a BU production of Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah, both of her parents were watching, despite the fact that her father was stationed in Baghdad and her mother was home in Chicago. Viewing the performance streamed live on their computers allowed the Burbuleses to share a simultaneous moment of parental pride.

Now, thanks to CFA’s new Virtual Concert Hall, more people can enjoy CFA events via virtual technology. The website now features several student performances and the 2010 Centennial Celebration of Roman Totenberg. More than 2,500 people have already watched the Elijah all the way through, more than double the number of people who attended the concert.

With the Virtual Concert Hall, BU joins a small but growing number of universities putting their concerts online, but no other school is yet recording in high definition or using as many cameras as CFA, says Casey Soward, School of Music assistant director of production and performance.

Dean Benjamín Juárez says the Virtual Concert Hall will increase the audience for CFA performances by making them more convenient and because they are free. “This is a fantastic way to share what we do in the school,” he says. “It’s an investment that’s impossible not to make.”

Juárez plans to grow the site incrementally, with several more concerts to be added next year. Over time, he says, the goal is to put more and more of the College’s 400 annual concerts online, as well as art exhibitions featured in CFA’s four galleries.

The latest addition to the Virtual Concert Hall: The BU Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Chorus’s April 2 performance of Rachmaninoff’s The Bells and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 was streamed live on the site and will be archived there.

This article was excerpted with permission from BU Today.