Milwaukee Symphony's Speakeasy shows put audience onstage a few feet from great musicians

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra spent $90 million for a new concert hall so I could sit onstage about 10 feet away from one of the world's leading pianists. Of course, the MSO didn't renovate a '30s movie palace with an Art Deco lobby into a concert hall just so I could get a closeup view of Vijay Iyer's left hand at work. Opening the Bradley Symphony Center was key to the orchestra's long-term survival strategy of maximizing the number of performances it could stage in a home of its own....