Music Hall makeover
The Music Hall Working Group officially unveiled its wish list for Music Hall, and announced Monday that "Phase One" of its planning study is complete. Here's the list:
Better patron amenities
Artistic modifications to help the symphony, May Festival and opera achieve their artistic goals
Better workplace conditions for musicians, visiting artists, and staff
Backstage improvements for productions and operations
Maintenance improvements necessary to keep the facility in top shape
The consultants on the project are Jaffe Holden Acoustics, Inc., Norwalk, Conn.
Fisher Dachs Associates Theatre Planning and Design, New York and GBBN Architects, Cincinnati
And here's the Music Hall Working Group: Steven Monder, president, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and executive director, Cincinnati May Festival; Patricia Beggs, CEO and general director, Cincinnati Opera; Steve Loftin, president and executive director, Cincinnati Arts Assoc.; and Paul Kaine, executive director, Cincinnati Ballet.
Let us know your ideas. And watch for more about the consultants and the Music Hall plans on Sunday.
posted by Janelle Gelfand at 6:17 PM
3 Comments:
at 11/21/2006 10:15:00 AM 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 11/28/2006 02:22:00 PM 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 12/06/2006 10:07:00 AM 
MusicLover said...
-
-
Post a Comment*Reducing the seating capacity of Music Hall would be a crime. Besides, the May Festival and Opera generally fill the place up. My suggestion: cleanup/ paintup/ fixup inside (no major changes); expand/improve the Critics Club restaurant and add safer parking. In the meantime, start spending some money on more effective marketing. Surely the hall would fill up if more people knew what a treasure we have in the CSO and Paavo Jarvi.
The May Festival and the Opera only perform two months out of the year. Filling the seats for an entire symphony orchestra season is a VERY difficult task, and as Richie Hawley (CSO Principal Clarinetist) has already commented in another posting, the CSO is doing quite well with numbers when compared to the other major orchestras of the world. The hall has about 1000-1500 more seats than any other symphony orchestra hall in the world. And a VERY large number of those seats are no good anyway (visually and acoustically). Are we really to think that symphony orchestra audiences will be larger here in Cincinnati than they are in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago? If the CSO is at par, then I think they must be doing a pretty good job.
We must also understand the challenges facing the orchestra itself when having to play in a space that really isn't a concert hall. Springer Auditorium is a proscenium theater, not a concert hall. This causes many problems for an orchestra... the musicians have difficulty hearing one another since the proscenium acts as sort of an acoustical wall, keeping the string sound in front of the proscenium and the wind and brass sound behind it. This is also a problem for the winds and brass in that in order to be able to project in the hall (which is already much larger than most) they must play louder... overblow, if you will... which leads to a higher rate of injury. The musicians also feel a disconnect from the audience when they are placed so far away from them. What the audience might not understand is that when all the lights on the stage are on and the lights in the hall are dimmed, the musicians cannot see or even hear the audience as they would in other halls. This disconnect impedes the energy of a performance.
"Safer" parking (it's more than safe enough), a better restaurant/club, and little fixer-uppers inside the hall are just not answers to... well, anything, really. Except maybe to please the people that already attend symphony. The idea (I intentially use the word "idea") that Music Hall is an unsafe place is not at all the CSO's problem, but it is a problem of the perception of the area by potential concertgoers (Maybe even a racial issue... shall I go there?). The current Music Hall parking lot is patrolled by police officers, and even allows you to walk across an incredibly well-lit bridge, so you don't even have to walk on the street. Although, being as there are so many people walking around before AND after concerts, I don't see how anyone can think it's unsafe to walk across Central Parkway to get your car.
In conclusion, bringing the orchestra forward in the hall and removing seats will make the hall more intimate, to the audience and to the orchestra, and will improve the acoustic to enable the orchestra to play even better, and to sound even better, than they already do. It's really a no-brainer in my eyes.
The two consultants named in the lead article on the the renovation are both renowned for pushing costs up, getting projects way behind schedule and not being responsive to the needs of the orchestras, singers and audiences. This is a TERRIBLE choice for Cincinnati. Get consultants who listen to the people who will make Music Hall a home in our city, not these rich fat-cats.
* Our online blogs currently are hosted and operated by a third party, namely, Blogger.com. You are now leaving the Cincinnati.Com website and will be linked to Blogger.com's registration page. The Blogger.com site and its associated services are not controlled by Cincinnati.Com and different terms of use and privacy policy will apply to your use of the Blogger.com site and services.
By proceeding and/or registering with Blogger.com you agree and understand that Cincinnati.Com is not responsible for the Blogger.com site you are about to access or for any service you may use while on the Blogger.com site.
<< Home