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I'm a sucker for anything Disney: both parents worked at the Burbank studio during the 1950's, and I spent many happy young years running around there. I even met Walt once and shook his hand.
It appears the Walt Disney Company made a substantial contribution funding construction of this new home of the LA Phil, so I should have loved it. Well, some parts yes. But the exterior (all massive aluminum baffles) is bulky and unfriendly. Actually, it's hideous. Architect Frank Gehry may be some kind of local celebrity, but on the outside his much praised masterwork repulses. Inside it's merely confusing: if not for helpful ushers I would not have located my seat in the side balcony. Arriving there I found no legroom and suffered much discomfort because of it. My advice, if you're big or tall, is to wear kneepads and shinguards. You'll be sorry if you don't
The hall's interior is striking, however. Construction appears almost entirely of wood, with upholstered seating. Nonparallel surfaces abound, including orchestra seats divided into sections by high curved walls. The ceiling swoops and bends as well, and side walls bulge, giving the overall appearance of an oldtime sailing vessel. The organ loft is covered with long upward-thrusting 8x8" beams, as if the building were in motion, crashing through the waves. There is seating behind and above the orchestra (which I did not try), a feature I am fond of.
Sonically, I don't recall encountering a better-listening hall anywhere. The orchestra was clear, well deliniated, and loud. Solo instruments stood out (mandolin, harpsichord, strings). Bass was deep, powerful, and well defined. The LAPO sounds world-class, or better. I guess Mr. Gehry deserves his celebrity, if this interior was his doing. Kudos all around to those involved.
I just wish they'd take out a few rows of seats and give the paying customers some room to stretch. Maybe I'll write management a letter.
Follow Ups:
Really neat venue. Wished the program contained some organ music.
Having sat in most of the different sections in Disney Hall I can say that most seats do not suffer from this problem of lack of leg space. Disney Hall is IMO pretty remarkable in that it offers a good view and excellent sound from the majority of the seats in the house.
I have not experienced another concert hall in it's class.
At full capacity the Disney Hall can hold 2,265 people. Architect Frank Gehry designed the building and is responsible for its striking exterior. I have two architect friends, one hates it, the other accepts it. I happen to like it.
Gehry worked with acoustician Yusuhisa Toyota on the interior of the hall, but it was Toyota who had responsibility for the acoustics. For organ concerts it's unbeatable. Sitting in the balcony at the level of the organ gives a clarity and definition that is remarkable. It's easy to tell the difference between the five 32-foot stops. The hall supports the deep, powerful bass with ease. It's never boomy and never masks the other higher stops. The frequency balance from top to bottom is as good as it gets.
It's true the path to one's seat is a bit of a maze, especially the first time, and the seats are very tight. My knees are up against the seat in front of me.
as well as heating up the surrounding sidewalks (to 140 degrees!) and blinding car drivers. Pretty funny....
Russell
Before Bambi left in a screech of Bentley and roar of Jaguar, he weighed in on the Disney Hall. He commented on the tiny seats, confusing circulation, sculptural oddities and the sound. Unlike you, he found nothing that he liked in it, including the sound: "If the Disney were speakers, they would be selling at $400/pair." I've wanted to visit the hall, but missed my chance when I was in California two years ago.
t
10. He ded
9. Now posts under the pseudonym "Man of LaMachu"
8. No longer listens to classical music; only listens to Eurotrash techno
7. No longer listens to music at all; leader of the "all music is toxic" interrorist cell
6. No longer listens to music; devoted to making money, not blowing it on music and audio
5. No time [to post]; now a radicalist composer using only silent, serial pitches
4. On the lam in Mexico after a deadly feud with Donald the Duck
3. Has become a moderator, paranoically watching everything
2. Has returned to his former status of being a cartoon in a Disney animated movie
1. No longer resident of planet Earth; gone to planets unknown
All in fun.
Here's my two cents on the hall:1. Exterior: It's certainly interesting, but doesn't do a whole lot for me.
2. Interior: Parts of it can be a maze. I've say in the top row and it was a bit of an epic journey getting there. Lots of stairs, passages and winding bends.
3. The Hall: architecturally I think it's beautiful. The pattern and coloring of the seat covers are hideous.
4. Acoustics: It's a bit bright and booming. Lots of presences, but lacks the warmth of a place like Carnegie Hall. That being said, the acoustics are still better than most halls.
Edits: 05/31/12
My comments on the sound refer to the hall configuration for last weekend's "Don Giovanni". Several rows of front orchestra seats were removed to make a stage for singers and some crude sets, and the orchestra was placed behind this stage, nearly butting up against the auditorium's front wall. Singers followed the conductor's beat on TV monitors.
In normal use the orchestra sits about 20ft in front of said wall.
I estimate Disney Hall has about 2,200 seats, making it smaller than average.
How did Bambi leave?
"He was one of those men who live in poverty so that their lines of questioning may continue." - John Steinbeck
No poisonous digital processing/amplification, right?
Or, is it?
Hi, Mike,
Sorry for the late reply - I don't believe it was amplified. We were sitting at the side during the Don Giovanni performance, and the staging was such that the singers would sometimes face the other side of the hall. During these times, we would hear more reflected sound than direct sound. It was disconcerting at first, but we adjusted to it. And at least we had a bit of leg room in the side seats (unlike the previous night in the first balcony!).
I just wish they'd take out a few rows of seats and give the paying customers some room to stretch. Maybe I'll write management a letter.
The business of all performing arts is how many seats you have to sell -- the more seats, the more revenue per show.
The reason that there are so few acoustically good concert halls built in the last 60 years is because managers tried to put too many seats in the hall, resulting in the hall being too large -- Avery Fischer Hall is a classic example.
One of the reasons Disney sounds so good is because it's relatively small compared to other recently built halls. But to get as many ticket buyers in the house as possible, you have to be squeezed in tightly.
If they were to remove 100 seats to give everyone more leg space, that would have a dramatic affect on their earned revenue. Let's say each seat sells for an average of $50, and they do 100 subscription concerts in the hall a year -- they'd lose $500,000 a year. So the lack of leg rooms helps boost their revenue.
And if you think Disney is tight, listen to what they do on Broadway: if it seems likely that a show is going to be smash hit, to fit as many people in the house per show as possible, the producer will have all the seats in the house removed and replaced with narrower ones. So the demand for a Broadway show determine how tightly the seats in the house are packed.
are like airline economy class torture seats!
BTW, my wife's review of "Don Giovanni" is taking longer than I expected - she probably won't have it ready until tomorrow.
Hi-
The cause of the problems in Avery Fisher Hall was not just too many seats. An equally important factor was that the seats were too close together and the rows too close together, and so there was no acoustical contribution from reflections from the wooden floor, and that makes a hall deader.
Take a look at how the seats in Seiji Ozawa Hall are designed and placed... .
But yes, all these factors were driven by Board members worrying about how to pay it off. Unfortunately, Mr. Beranek at the time believed that as long as the ITDG function calculation held, all would be well.
Over the decades, that hall has absorbed far more money in fixes than doing it right in the first place would have cost.
An expensive lesson. But in many ways helpful. By creating problems that could not be ignored or explained away, the NYP Board did the Boards of countless other orchestras a big favor by creating such a warning. E.g., when the worthies of Nashville wanted a hall, they went about it very conservatively and put little faith in "magic number theory." And they got a fantastic-sounding hall.
One could almost say that architectural acoustics would be neither so advanced nor so widely taken seriously, except for NY's Philharmonic Hall.
JM
I wouldn't be too hard on the board -- it's actually good that they realize that you're leaving money on the table when demand outstrips the number of seats.
The real problem is that we build these new halls and arts center and there is zero plan of what to do with the nights when the anchor resident company is not using the facility. As a result, the majority of nights are dark. It would be financially feasible to build much smaller and acoustically superior halls -- 1,700 to 2,000 seats -- if there were significantly fewer darks night.
Another alternative -- which would require a huge leap of faith -- is getting rid of the subscription system and adopting dynamic pricing for all concerts. With a 2,500 seat hall you're not going to sell out every concert -- you'll be lucky to consistently break 85% to 90%. A 1,800 hall with dynamic pricing could earn as much as as a 2,500 seat hall with popular shows. For example, when an orchestra plays something like Beethoven's 5th or 9th, or Mahler's 2nd, demand for tickets is very high. You get a lot of people who rarely go to the orchestra, but recognize that these are special pieces of music and are willing to pay top dollar. As the pace of sales increases, the price of the tickets in the house should rise.
While this Broadway pricing model might be to for-profit for some people, it's really silly that orchestra's don't maximize revenue from profitable concerts to help supplement ones where attendance is going to be soft.
The great recordings the Boston Symphony made between the end of WWII and when they lost their last long-term record contract (in the early 1980s, IIRC) were made possible by the financial success of The Boston Pops in concert and on record. Movie music and show tunes and lightweight concert fare made it possible to program and record Schonberg's Gurrelieder.
Perhaps the last word belongs to Marge Simpson: "The Springfield Symphony is playing Gustav Mahler in abject squalor!" There was more than a little truth in that episode. Viz the travails of Philadelphia, a concert hall at times is not much more than an occasion for highbrow civic bragging rights. I doubt the Philadelphia Orchestra would have had to file Bankruptcy if they hadn't been seduced into building a new hall, when there was more-than-ample handwriting on the wall that all their basic metric were in trouble.
Ciao,
JM
Perhaps the last word belongs to Marge Simpson: "The Springfield Symphony is playing Gustav Mahler in abject squalor!" There was more than a little truth in that episode. Viz the travails of Philadelphia, a concert hall at times is not much more than an occasion for highbrow civic bragging rights. I doubt the Philadelphia Orchestra would have had to file Bankruptcy if they hadn't been seduced into building a new hall, when there was more-than-ample handwriting on the wall that all their basic metric were in trouble.
The Philadelphia Orchestra didn't pay a single cent to build the Kimmel Center. All they did was agree to a 25 year lease and to let Ticket Philadelphia manage the rentals of The Academy of Music, which they do own.
And ironically, that's the problem.
By not having an ownership or even a management stake in the facility, the Orchestra limited itself in its ability to earn auxiliary earned revenue. My understanding is that the LA Philharmonic manages Disney Hall, and as a result, they take a percentage of the earned revenue from rentals, non-LA Phil programs they present, as well as the parking lot.
So I would argue that it would have behooved Philadelphia to have some kind of a stake in the new hall which would have allowed them to earn revenue from it.
And lastly, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that they really needed to go to a new hall.
I've heard stories to the contrary, but the old Academy of Music in Philadelphia was to me the clearest, most acoustically magnificent concert hall I've ever attended...... Maybe I had great seats (I sat in the side balcony). But I'd be curious to what people thought of Kimmel compared to the old place.
The Academy of Music was built primarily as an opera house--it opened four decades before the Philadelphia Orchestra was founded.
Especially for "bel canto" opera, you need a very short sharp reverb time, so that the previous rapid-fire recitative syllable has pretty much died out before the next one comes along.
Now, perhaps the good mesh between the Academy and bel canto expression was unwitting, in that I have read that the large spaces below the stage, for stage machinery and storage of sets and costumes, act as a resonant trap, which not only limits reverb but also untlimate volume output, compared to a more modern hall.
However, the cosmic joke might be that "The Philadelphia Sound" developed to make the best of a hall unsuited to Romantic symphonic repertory.
Donizetti was hardly cold in his grave when planning for the Academy began, and, Mahler was not yet in diapers. So, I think it important not to make anachronistic criticisms, and remember "Horses for Courses."
JM
Todd,I have to seriously doubt your ears :)
I've attended many Philadelphia Orchestras concerts at the Academy, and not to boast, but I've many halls in the United States and Europe (Boston, Carnegie, Avery Fischer, Disney, Chicago, Atlanta, Musikverein, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonie, Salle Pleyel, etc.), and the only hall I think is worse than the Academy is Avery Fischer.
To give you an idea of how bad the acoustics are, record labels just wouldn't make recordings in it (but they actually would and still do in the Avery Fischer). In the late 1960s RCA made one final attempt with the introduction of spot mic'ing, but they quickly gave up.
The sound in Verizon Hall is crystal clear and does a great job handling bass (it's clearly defined and never boomy), making it ideal for 20th century music and the piano. While I wouldn't call the hall dry, the reverberation is limited, so it doesn't blanket the instruments in a warm sound the same way Carnegie Hall or the Amsterdam Concertgebouw do, making it less than ideal for romantic music.
But the hall is by no means the disaster some people claim it is. I'd rank it in the 70th percentile. It's a huge improvement over the Academy of Music, the acoustics are more than good enough to make live recordings in it (some of the Ondine SACDs were quite wonderful -- much better than live recordings made in more famous halls), and it offers much more stage space for the orchestra.
Edits: 06/02/12
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