BUFFALO, New York-
Fans of architect Frank Lloyd Wright can learn about his life through music and in the field during an “immersion weekend” meant to showcase the city’s architectural and cultural strengths–and prove they are not mutually exclusive.
The highlight is a gala organized by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and a group dedicated to restoring a sprawling Wright-designed estate in Buffalo, followed by the BPO’s concert version of “Shining Brow,” an opera about Wright’s life that was first performed in 1993.
Also on the itinerary, put together by specialty tour planners Ashton Drye, are excursions to some of the area’s Wright-designed buildings and other notable structures created by Henry Hobson Richardson, Louis Sullivan and others.
“The big picture is it puts Buffalo on the map nationally and internationally as a destination for architecture lovers,” said Stephen Baker, the BPO’s associate executive director.
Buffalo has long been developing a reputation with Wright fans. The region has four Wright homes, including the prairie-style Darwin Martin House in Buffalo, the subject of a $35 million restoration so meticulous that it took eight years to find a company that could properly match the color and size of the bricks.
Tourists in town for the immersion weekend will be shown through areas of the Martin House complex not usually open to the public. And they will see those hard-to-find bricks, 90,000 of them, on the newly dedicated carriage house, pergola and conservatory that were reconstructed after being torn down in the 1960s.
Two more Wright projects are due to open next year, a filling station and boathouse designed by the architect but until now, never built. A mausoleum built from Wright sketches was completed in Buffalo’s historic Forest Lawn Cemetery in 2004.
The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra’s interpretation of Daron Hagen’s “Shining Brow,” which received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, is semi-staged, meaning it is without the full sets of a typical performance. Instead, photographs reflecting the scenes, characters and moods of the opera will be projected above the orchestra as it performs with a chorus. Hagen is the stage director for the Buffalo performance.
The orchestra recently released a CD entitled “Prairie Music” that was inspired by the music of composer Aaron Copland and Wright’s architecture.
The weekend plans also include tours of the Martin family’s Lake Erie summer estate, Graycliff, designed by Wright and now being restored. The estate draws about 7,500 visitors each year, about half of them from outside of the region or country, executive director Reine Hauser said. The number is expected to grow as the restoration progresses.
“The (Buffalo Niagara) Convention and Visitors Bureau is working on rebranding Buffalo as a cultural tourism destination, focusing on its art, design and architectural gems,” spokeswoman Nancy Vargo said. “We find there is an audience.”
The Wright theme continues the following week when Wright’s architect grandson, Eric Lloyd Wright, is the keynote speaker at an arts & crafts conference Nov. 10.
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