Where can I find a no-catering Hall in New York?

Major U.S. Concert Hall Acoustics

• Recently I?ve read that two major concert halls have gone through, or are going through, acoustic upgrades. These halls are Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, and Avery Fisher Hall in New York. Additionally, the new Disney Hall in Los Angeles has just opened. Can you find any articles which discuss the success (or failure) of the upgrades and the acoustics of the new hall? While you're at it, maybe you could find some information about the pipe organ in the Disney hall. I'll up the ante for this information.

• Answer:

  Hello beauregard-ga, This was a very interesting question to research. These three halls are in three very different places with regard to their status as concert halls. -------------------------------------------------------------------- I will start with the Davies Symphony hall in San Francisco. Davies hall was built in 1980. It had a poor reputation for acoustics for 12 years, until it underwent a major renovation in 1992. Since that time, it seems to be accepted as a world-class concert hall. San Francisco Symphony Davies Symphony Hall History http://www.sfsymphony.org/templates/hall_over.asp?nodeid=96 ?Completed in September, 1980 after more than two years of construction, Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall is the home of the San Francisco Symphony. More than six thousand individuals, foundations and corporations gave the money needed to build the Hall. The City of San Francisco donated the land and the State and Federal governments gave a total of $10 million toward the $28 million project. The San Francisco Symphony's home owes its name to the efforts and perseverance of Mrs. Louise M. Davies, the largest individual contributor to the building. During the summer of 1992, Davies Symphony Hall underwent a major renovation, enhancing its acoustics to ensure an even better musical experience, and making an already stunning interior more beautiful still. Special care was also taken to provide improved facilities for the physically disabled.? This article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 10, 1992 Davies Hall Renovation Applauded Symphony Opens With Glorious Sound By Robert Commanday, Chronicle Music Critic http://www.kreysler.com/about/press/sfc1-art.htm ?Davies Hall reopened last night with the new sound that everyone has been waiting and hoping for. The acoustics, which were the controversial issue for the first 12 years of the hall's life, have been remade to provide an excellent and exciting symphonic sound.? San Francisco Chronicle THE SCENE: Overheard at the Symphony 'Sound clouds' make beautiful music Jesse Hamlin Monday, December 30, 2002 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/12/30/DD242012.DTL ?"It's a tunable sound shell," says Jacobs, who helped install the canopy in 1991 under the direction of the man who designed the computer-run winch system that runs it, now-retired house electrician George van Buren. The $850,000 canopy was conceived by acoustician Larry Kirkegaard, who worked with the Symphony on the $10 million renovation of Davies in 1992, the primary goal of which was to improve the hall's notoriously spotty acoustics. The panels were the first step in that renovation, which greatly improved the hall's sound.? Atlanta.creativeloafing.com Love at first sound http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2002-12-11/vibes_live.html ?One of these was San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall, with over 3,000 seats, completed in 1980. It was so bad that only 12 years later the inside was completely altered, reducing the seating capacity but vastly improving the acoustics. Kirkegaard was involved in the Davies renovation, converting one of America's worst concert halls into one if its best.? ?SHOOT THE HALL, NOT THE MUSICIANS?, By Paul Hertelendy Artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music Week of Nov. 1-8, 2003, Vol. 6, No. 28 http://www.artssf.com/sfo0628.html ?This lesson has been emphatically brought home on numerous occasions by the San Francisco Symphony, which I have heard in several halls in Northern California. Hear them at home in Davies Hall, these players sound like a vibrant, world-class ensemble. Hear them anywhere else, and they?re usually just another band off in the distance, neither invigorating nor very stimulating.? --- ?But how many cities can afford such a single-purpose hall? Davies cost some $30 million in 1980---much more in today?s dollars---and Los Angeles? new Disney Hall that just opened ran $270 million, mostly raised through the Walt Disney legacy and other private funds. They are tops acoustically, just like the Philharmonie Hall in Berlin. None of these is a proscenium hall; they are one-room spaces, with the audience embracing the stage.? -------------------------------------------------------------------- Avery Fisher hall, home of the New York Philharmonic, is widely criticized for it?s poor acoustics. It was built in the early 1960s and has apparently undergone several upgrades with no real success. Brandeis University Architectural acoustics: The $20,000,000 mistake http://people.brandeis.edu/~sekuler/SensoryProcessesMaterial/architecturalAcoustics.pdf ?But concert halls have to do more than merely look good; they have to accommodate a certain quality of sound. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of some of the world's foremost authorities, the orchestra, its conductor, as well as audiences found Avery Fisher Hall's acoustics unsatisfactory, to put it gently. The orchestra sounded dry and lifeless, its bass sounds were weak, and echoes at some seat locations caused a single note to sound like two notes. Worst of all, musicians in the orchestra could not hear what they themselves were playing --or what their neighbors were playing. Between the hall's opening in the early 1960's and the end of 1974, there were five separate attempts to solve these problems. Finally, Columbia University's Cyril Harris, an acoustics expert, ordered that the hall be gutted and rebuilt, virtually from scratch. It took tens of millions of dollars to redo the concert hall. The original design for Avery Fisher Hall was flawed, flawed, flawed. Despite the efforts of the world's pre-eminent architects, the hall was an unmitigated disaster. One problem was that the original architect had not raked, or tilted, the floor sufficiently. Because the stage was not terribly high and because the audience seating was relatively flat, sounds created on the stage tended to be absorbed by the bodies and clothing of people in the first few rows, leaving little residual sound for the ears of people who sat further back (in the cheaper --and quieter-- seats). This error is astonishing; after all, this maneuver was something the ancient Greeks had worked out long before.? LAWeekly.com A Lot of Night Music The Site and the Sound, by Alan Rich http://www.laweekly.com/ink/03/09/a-rich.php ?These gala openings had been preceded for months, maybe years, by claims that the acoustics in those halls would rival, if not surpass, the legendary sounds of Boston's Symphony Hall or Vienna's Musikverein. It never happened. Vancouver and San Francisco have undergone improvements; the brash, bright sound of Davies these days is, in fact, a perfect mirror of Michael Tilson Thomas' music making. Everybody knows that, even after several highly publicized remakes, however, the only salvation for Avery Fisher Hall lies in the wrecker's ball liberally administered.? In June of this year, it was announced that the New York Philharmonic would be leaving Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center for Carnegie Hall in 2006. The New York Sun, Jun 3, 2003 CLASSICAL MUSIC Is Carnegie Hall a Winner or a Loser? By RACHEL DONADIO http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2003/06/03&ID=Ar01701 ?The Philharmonic, a tenant in Lincoln Center?s acoustically problematic Avery Fisher Hall since 1962, is certainly thrilled to have a home. "Carnegie Hall becomes our home. We?re partners in the whole thing," said Zarin Mehta, the executive director of the New York Philharmonic. "We will have everything to say about the running of the hall."? --- ?What seems obvious is that the merger is a major coup for the Philharmonic, whose board was going to have to help raise $400 million to overhaul or renovate Avery Fisher Hall and its famously bad acoustics. As recently as last fall, the Philharmonic planned to tear down the hall and build anew. But earlier this year the orchestra and Lincoln Center determined it would cost too much. In February, Norman Foster was chosen to submit plans for a renovation to the hall, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to carry out a feasibility study on the logistics of rebuilding vs. renovating.? However, this deal fell through in October and the future of Avery Fisher Hall is still uncertain. Carnegie Ends Merger Talks with New York Philharmonic By Brian Wise, WNYC.org http://www.wnyc.org/music/articles/21511 ?NEW YORK, NY (2003-10-08) A much-heralded but controversial plan to merge the New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall ? two of New York?s most powerful cultural institutions ? has collapsed after three months of talks. ? --- ?Many questions remain, particularly how renovations will proceed at Avery Fisher Hall now that the Philharmonic will be staying. Before the announcement of the merger the orchestra commissioned a report from the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill that detailed several renovation options: $400 million for rebuilding Avery Fisher, $300 million for renovating its interior, $25 million for more modest improvements and $100 million for moving to Carnegie with reconstruction there.? Can Crisis Save Lincoln Center From Disaster? by Clay Risen, The New York Observer, 10/27/03 http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=8071 ?Lord Foster?s second challenge is to settle once and for all Avery Fisher?s infamous acoustic deficiencies. This means going beyond the complete gutting and refitting that the hall received in 1976. Fortunately, this is another reason why Lord Foster is an excellent choice for the renovation. Not only can he do the bulk of the engineering work in-house, but he has a great track record of working with specialty firms on matters beyond his ken. "If anyone can figure it out, he can," said Mr. Pedersen. "He?ll probably find someone to work with him; he?ll hook up with [Yasuhisa] Toyota or one of the other great acousticians."? Memo to Philharmonic: Stay Put and Redecorate by Charles Michener, The New York Observer, 10/20/03 http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=8018 ?Second, everyone, starting with the Philharmonic?s chairman and his board members, should stop talking about the hall?s alleged acoustical shortcomings?a complaint that, as many of the world?s top musicians will tell you, is a load of hooey. (Suggestion: enlarge the prison-like balconies, which is where all the best sound goes.) I have attended a number of Philharmonic concerts this season and, under Lorin Maazel?s Mephistophelean baton, the orchestra has never sounded more exciting. Mr. Maazel may not be a pin-up whippersnapper in the mold of the Los Angeles Philharmonic?s Esa-Pekka Salonen, but not even the feverish Finn can match this veteran maestro at revving the hoariest works vividly into the present tense. Mr. Maazel likes to conduct without a score, and his command over these world-class musicians, if sometimes overbearing, is breathtaking. World-class, edge-of-the-seat ensemble playing is the result.? Philharmonic Returns to Lincoln Center VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press Miami Herald, Mon, Oct. 20, 2003 http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/7060887.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp ?The orchestra's plans to move to Carnegie were scuttled Oct. 7. The orchestra and Carnegie Hall cited the impossibility of accommodating the Philharmonic's large number of concerts without compromising programming. The uncertainty came as Lincoln Center was grappling with the launch of a massive decade-long redevelopment project. For now, the project is modest: a $16 million grant is kick-starting renovation of Alice Tully Hall; a new streetfront approach to is in the works. A linchpin of the renewal has been plans for Fisher Hall, whose tricky acoustics took years to adjust and are still unsatisfactory to many ears. By moving to Carnegie Hall, the orchestra would have saved itself a redevelopment price tag that could top $300 million for Fisher Hall alone, while having to find a temporary hall in which to perform during construction.? -------------------------------------------------------------------- Researching Disney Hall was particularly interesting since I live in Los Angeles. I have driven by Disney Hall, but I have not been inside. Walt Disney Concert Hall celebrated it?s opening night with much fanfare on October 23. Thus far, the acoustics of Disney hall seem to be living up to the high expectations. Music Center / Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County Walt Disney Concert Hall Acoustics http://www.musiccenter.org/wdch/acoustics.html ?Walt Disney Concert Hall is a synthesis of acoustical and architectural design. The architect, Frank Gehry, and the acoustician, Yasuhisa Toyota, from Nagata Acoustics (Tokyo, Japan) came to the design process with very specific goals, but with no preconceptions about the form of the hall. Gehry was interested in a room with a sculpted shape that would be evocative of music and that would create an intimate connection between the orchestra and the audience. Toyota wanted a space that would create a warm sound, but also a sound of exceptional clarity. The Walt Disney family insisted that the hall have an acoustical quality that would equal or surpass the best concert halls in the world.? Brentwood Magazine PITCH PERFECT The LA Philharmonic finally gets the home it deserves http://www.brentwoodmagazine.com/media-3/Nov-Dec-03/architecture.shtml ?Unlike the multipurpose pavilion, ?Disney Hall is designed for the specific acoustics and exactly for the orchestra?s needs,? said Arvind Manocha, director of strategy for the hall. ?The L.A. Philharmonic now has the hall it deserves,? Van de Kamp said. ?It is an absolutely perfect acoustical hall.? Nagata Acoustics and project chief Yasuhisa Toyota handled acoustics, which were made pitch-perfect for the 293,000 square feet of space. Seeing the inside of the enormous and empty main auditorium gives one an appreciation for its visual majesty, as well as its acoustical design. As I stood near the back row of the auditorium in a sea of 2,265 seats, weeks before the hall opened to the public, whispers from technicians on stage were easily audible, as they bounced off the soft billowing curves of the Douglas fir ceil-ing, through side honeycomb paneling and around the magnificent organ, made up of 6,100 curved wood pipes, that commands the room.The shoebox-style seating makes it possible for the audience to sit facing the conductor during a perfor-mance, and only furthers the hall?s acoustical majesty.? SignOnSanDiego.com The San Diego Union-Tribune Disney Hall opens with a bang http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20031025-9999_1c25gala.html ?The acoustics were responsive, ensuring a high degree of clarity during the ever-so-eclectic program, which positioned musicians not just on the stage (as with "The Star-Spangled Banner" sung by jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves) but all around the hall. From the balconies, trumpets and trombones gloried in the reverberant sonorities of Gabrieli's "Canzon septimi toni no. 2," written in the late 16th century for Venice's St. Mark's Cathedral. From the main-floor steps, the Los Angeles Master Chorale excelled in the otherworldly harmonies of Ligeti's "Lux aeterna," familiar from the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey."? --- ?If performing at the Chandler Pavilion was like paddling in a murky river, Disney Hall was the equivalent of a pristine swimming pool. The clarity was exciting and a bit merciless. Such was the case when the orchestra's admirable concertmaster Martin Chalifour (a veteran of San Diego's Mainly Mozart Festival) smudged a snippet of rapid-passage work during the "Preludio" from Bach's unaccompanied Partita No. 3, performed amid the wildly angled organ pipes.? UCLA Today THE AWESOME SOUND OF MUSIC Music faculty at home in Disney Hall BY WENDY SODERBURG, UCLA Today Staff http://www.today.ucla.edu/2003/031104people_music.html ?Hanulik added: ?The sound is much clearer, much more defined, and it has a wonderful presence that the Dorothy Chandler just wasn?t able to project to the audience. In an inferior hall, the mid-to-low range of the orchestra gets swallowed up. At Disney, that?s not the case. There is now a very real bass presence, and it?s very exciting.?? --- ?Neill added, ?We haven?t ever been able to be heard the way we want to be heard. We?d go out on tour and play in some of these great halls all over the world, and we?d sound fabulous. And we?d say, ?Too bad we don?t have a place like this at home.? And now we do.?? Miami Herald, Oct. 21, 2003 Disney Hall Raises LA Arts Scene Profile GARY GENTILE Associated Press http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/7068035.htm ?It's already been a hit with the musicians and singers whose job it will be to add life to the building. The Los Angeles Master Chorale recently took the hall "for a test drive," in the words of chorale director Grant Gershon. "This hall rewards good singing," he said as acappella notes rose up the gently sloped terraced seats into the balconies. The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 39 years, swallowed much of the sound, forcing musicians to play harder just to be heard. "A velvet haze hung over the sound over there," Gershon said. "It took off all the edges, good bad or indifferent." Said conductor Salonen. "In the new hall, a normal Los Angeles music lover will have the first opportunity to hear what the orchestra really sounds like, and I think they will be pretty astonished." The acoustics were designed by Yasuhisa Toyota, who also worked on the Suntory Hall in Tokyo and with Gehry on the Bard College Performing Arts Center in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. Adjustable bowed strips of wood and curved surfaces produce a crisper sound without as much effort. The 2,265 seats, which surround the stage, are cradled in swooping panels of Douglas fir, creating a warm, intimate sound. A pipe organ, which will be completed next year, sits in the back of the hall, its square wooden pipes askew, like pencils tossed into a coffee cup.? Friday, October 24, 2003 - Page updated at 10:39 A.M. Opening gala at L.A.'s Disney Hall heralds new era for West Coast By Melinda Bargreen, Seattle Times music critic http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/classicalmusicdance/2001773668_disney240.html ?When the Philharmonic did arrive just before intermission, it was worth waiting for: sparkling Mozart, the brief Symphony No. 32. And the finale was the Philharmonic's signature piece, Stravinsky's challenging "Rite of Spring." In both cases, the sound proved vibrant to overwhelming, with lots of clarity and a big bass response. Seats close to the orchestra, however, hear a lot of direct, unreflected sound, mainly from the closest instruments (the French horns were almost deafening from my seat, just behind the violins).? LAWeekly A Lot of Night Music The Right Rite, by Alan Rich http://www.laweekly.com/ink/03/50/a-rich.php ?Everything ? well, almost everything ? about that seductive, welcoming room of wood, set within the incandescent curves and sparkles of its lustrous metal wrapping, deserves place in the jubilation. There are, of course, problems; did you ever hear of a new performing space that emerged unbeset by problems the first time out? Salonen and the orchestra have already encountered, and for the most part solved, small matters of echo and dead spots here and there, and the tweaking will go on into the future. In the opening-night gala there were things that didn?t work. I detected serious unbalances as the Master Chorale sang a complex, densely grained work of György Ligeti (the Lux Aeterna, which has also had a movie career, thanks to Kubrick?s 2001). The Gabrieli Canzona for antiphonal brass ensembles might have worked better if some of the players had performed in a balcony area, rather than across the orchestra seating.? --- ?Certain other problems may require more imaginative solutions. The very liveness that endows the sounds of music making in the hall also resounds to its detriment. A cough anywhere in the hall, a dropped program or ? heaven forfend! ? a cell phone is immediately and emphatically audible. So are footsteps on the wood flooring or, worse, on the stairways in the terrace and balcony levels. On the opening nights, the voices of broadcast engineers behind the balcony area also carried throughout the hall. Members of the orchestra have spoken about the problems in getting used to their new performing area; it must also happen that audiences will face these problems. Somewhere in this world, people take off their shoes before entering public spaces.? The NPR website includes four audio programs about the Disney Hall. The Disney Hall Radio Documentaries From KCRW-FM, Santa Monica, and KUSC-FM, Los Angeles http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/disneyhall/radiodocs.html I think you will particularly enjoy the second audio program, ?From the Inside Out: The Art of Construction?. It?s a 29-minute program, which includes a detailed discussion about the design of the hall and the acoustics with the architect Frank Gehry and the acoustics designer Yasuhisa Toyota. It also includes a discussion with the designer of the pipe organ, Manuel Rosales. The pipe organ is still in work. It won?t be completed for a year. For more information about the Walt Disney Concert Hall organ, visit the website of Rosales Organ Builders, http://www.rosales.com/ . Click on ?Opus List? in the upper center of the page. Scroll down to ?Opus 24?. Click on ?More? for photographs and additional information. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Other references: Gehry Partners http://www.thegehrybuilding.com/gehry2.htm Nagata Acoustics http://www.nagata.co.jp/gyoseki/disney-e.htm Time.com, Monday, Oct. 27, 2003 Perfect Pitch Nagata Acoustics, a virtuoso in sound, brought a new dimension to Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall By REBECCA WINTERS http://www.time.com/time/globalbusiness/printout/0,8816,524463,00.html -------------------------------------------------------------------- I hope you have found this information helpful. If you have any questions, please request clarification prior to rating the answer. 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