Eastman Theatre Acoustics Circa 1920’s, 1950’s/60’s, 1972, 2004, & 2008/9

Stirring the Soup

Dedicated to the respected acoustics of the original Eastman Theatre in its prime

…and to the possibility of their restoration.

Bob LairdSeptember 07b, 2008

“You have definitely laid the problem out and have suggested a direction to consider.  I am interested in seeing how this develops.” - Leo Beranek

Eastman-Rochester Orchestra onstage to accompany a silent film during the 1920's.In this era the sound of the Eastman Theatre was universally admired.

This is possibly as close as the Eastman Theatre ever came to a 'thrust stage.' The orchestra is thrust forward with no ceiling immediately above it. The wall angles of the set appear to match the house wall angles (not visible) and their topography provides highly variegated

near-reflections to the musicians. This is a vastly different set-up than at present with the 2004 shell. Was this set-up retained, essentially, for the once-weekly classical concerts?Table of Contents

Revisions:.........................................................................................................3A Note about the Photographs...........................................................................5A Note about the Anonymous Quotations..........................................................5A Statement of Appreciation and Purpose.........................................................5Enquiries:.........................................................................................................6Précis:..............................................................................................................7Letter: EASTMAN THEATRE: Renovations won't fix the acoustics..................91) Louder and Brighter...................................................................................112) The Sound and the Patron...........................................................................123) Mercury, Hendl, and a Dearth of Logic.......................................................134) An Orange Canopy.....................................................................................145) Some Informal Interviews...........................................................................166) A Broad-Based Discovery Process for 2008..................................................187) Goose Bumps..............................................................................................208) The Eastman Theatre vs. Severance Hall.....................................................239) Severance Hall 2000: Conserving a Pre-Existing Silk Purse.........................2810) The Eastman Theatre 2004: The Crux of the Matter, and a Proposed Solution..........................................................................................................32---Saving Classical Music on the Mezzanine---..................3611) Kleinhans Hall..........................................................................................3812) Loudness vs. Musical Accuracy.................................................................3913) Numerical Reduction in Seating vs. Reduced Total Volume of the Theatre. 4014) The Balcony at the Eastman Theatre.........................................................4015) A Thrust Stage at Eastman?......................................................................4116) Function Funneled into Form....................................................................4716a) Hearing is Believing.................................................................................5117) Slapback Redux and a Final Note about Those Box Seats...........................5318) Less Would Be More.................................................................................5419) A Note about Humidity, Instruments, and Sound at Eastman....................5420) Respect and Gratitude...............................................................................56Afterword.......................................................................................................57Closing Summary and Challenge....................................................................74An acoustically Relevant Letter from a Friend................................................77A Second Acoustically Relevant Letter from a Friend......................................78Original Essay, January 2006, edited May 18, 2008.........................................80Correspondence with Third-Party Acoustician, December 2007:.....................80Letter to City Newspaper, December 2005.......................................................80

2

3

Revisions:

May 23, 2008 – Date Originally Published May 30, 2008 – Lightly edited. More detail and clarity throughout. Worth re-reading by anyone deeply concerned for the music. May 31, 2008 – Afterword added. For those seeking a quick overview, provides the flavor of the article and adds two more photos. June 01, 2008 – Afterword: Inspired by this afternoon’s multiple-screen Tristan und Isolde on PBS, a minor flurry of alterations.June 04, 2008 – Entire Article lightly edited to enfold reader input and to improve clarity.June 05, 2008 – Chapter 16a inserted, providing 1950’s Eastman Theatre audio links from HaydnHouse at http://www.haydnhouse.com/ Photo of Symphony Hall in Boston inserted in Chapter 15, along with brief comment.June 06, 2008 – Table of Contents added. Photo of a view from a phantom box seat added. Minor editing throughout, for more clarity.June 08, 2008 – The paper I wish I had published on May 23, had I not been in so great a hurry to sound the alarm. More photos, more hall comparisons. Removed erroneous information about the new handicapped-accessible rest rooms. Extended quotations from Akustiks personnel about eliciting input from the Nashville symphony musicians at Schermerhorn. A stunning audio clip of Howard Hanson speaking from onstage in the then shell-less Eastman Theatre acoustic, introducing a trumpet fanfare, inserted at beginning of Chapter 16a.

Proposal to build a 2,044-seat shoebox hall within the Eastman Theatre! June 10, 2008 – Photo of 1920’s Eastman-Rochester Orchestra onstage added to Chapter 16, page 49. Photo analyzed to conceivably explain why the Theatre was universally acclaimed as acoustically perfect in that era. June 17, 2008 – The common use of a short wall immediately behind a shell-less orchestra, to obtain near-reflections for the benefit of the players, is noted on p. 41, third paragraph of Chapter 15. June 20 - 26, 2008 – Added an Eastman School faculty member’s strong corroboration of severe acoustical problems, to Chapter 5, page 17. Chapter 8, page 26 rewritten. Chapter 16, page 50 edited for further clarity. Afterword, pp. 73-74 similarly made clearer. Other changes made throughout in a desperate attempt to alert busy and musically passive people to the tragedy that

4

is being allowed to play out before our very ears. Even greater directness incorporated throughout. July 1, 2008 – pp. 25-26, 33-34, 39, 46-47, 50-53, 60, minor to very minor changes for clarity. Page 27 caption altered slightly. A stronger challenge issued on page 74.July 5, 2008 – Added full text of letter to City Newspaper of June 24, 2008 – page 9.July 7, 2008 – Added forcefulness to Closing Summary and Challenge on page 74.July 11, 2008 – Even more directness and clarity incorporated in Closing Summary and Challenge on page 74.

July 17, 2008 – Improved mental picturing of what happens to sound produced onstage in the Eastman Theatre, pp. 25 and 26.

September 07, 2008 – Removed p. 71 reference to the apparently defunct Performing Arts Center at Renaissance Square. A bus terminal and a community college now comprise in toto this ‘renaissance’ in downtown Rochesterburg.

A Note about the Photographs: I am grateful for the many freely available on-line sources of the photos I have borrowed. Having previously collected them rather haphazardly without their associated URL’s, I have not undertaken to attribute them. This paper is an entirely altruistic venture of no pecuniary

5

value to anyone. I hope that parties who have made the photos available for public viewing will look kindly upon my usage, and will accept my heartfelt gratitude for the availability of the photos.

A Note about the Anonymous Quotations: In some cases the parties quoted or paraphrased may be willing to come forward upon request. In fact only one person requested anonymity, but for the purposes of this paper I did not presume to attribute names to people not already publicly quoted elsewhere.

__________________

A Statement of Appreciation and PurposeMany thanks to William D. Bailer of Rochester for his ever-rigorous practical argument. It is safe to say that much of the sensible stuff herein is of his influence, while most flights of fantasy and any bad science are of my own doing.

This paper should be taken primarily as a wake-up call. It is intended as a vehicle for eclectic brainstorming, goaded by severe disappointment with the direction of the current and ongoing Eastman Theatre acoustic. The paper has come about because of the apparent absence of anyone in official capacity who so far dares admit what sonic horrors have been wrought upon the Eastman Theatre.

I hold no vested interest, save in music. It is not my livelihood; I am free to speak out. Such freedom, such academic freedom, seems distinctly lacking locally, in at least one main hall of higher learning.

The perspective I offer, whether or not unique, is that of a lover of the sound and content of classical music, and one who has known the Eastman Theatre well since 1965.

I pray this paper might serve its purpose, while fully aware that the odds are against it. One does what one can.

6

Either URL provides this MS Word version, formatted for single or double-sided printing:

http://sirhute.com/eastman-theatre-acoustics-may-2008-stirring-the-soup.doc

Either URL provides the identical material as above, but as a single HTML webpage:

http://sirhute.com/eastman-theatre-acoustics-may-2008-stirring-the-soup.htm

Inquiries:Bob Laird315-483-0523boblaird@rochester.rr.comThis material may be freely quoted or disseminated, for non-profit use.

7

Eastman Theatre Acoustics: Stirring the Soup

Précis: 

Something is wrong with the acoustics of the Eastman Theatre, and the 2008/2009 alterations will not fix things. First, a recap:

The acoustical changes imposed upon the Eastman Theatre in 1972, while highly touted and strongly embraced at the time, failed to examine, honor, and build upon five decades of general satisfaction with orchestral sound as heard in the house. Historically, conductors were more likely to be dissatisfied than were audiences. This was in part because, as a result of the Theatre’s fan shape, so little hall sound returned to the stage. The 1972 changes destroyed the original octave-to-octave balance by inserting a bright, dry ‘presence peak’ into the response curve. It took about three decades for that result to become officially recognized as unsatisfactory.

After such belated official recognition, further acoustical changes were imposed upon the Eastman Theatre in 2004. Those changes similarly failed to reach back to the roots of the Theatre. Instead, an overlaid contemporary concept of enhanced musical sound was applied, intended to excite audiences jaded by exposure to this present noisy world. The audible result, unchanged as of this writing, varies from a superficially impressive vast sonic muddle (in Orchestra Center seating) to a thin, piercingly bright, exploded sound with little sense of homogeneous ensemble (in the Balcony).

More or less by accident in 2004, a strong ‘slapback’ echo was brought to the fore. It is deleterious to listening from Orchestra seating and it seems likely that it is one of several factors which now interfere with ensemble onstage, at least at some stand positions. Slapback is a strong echo that sounds like a second beginning of the same sound one has just heard, occurring very shortly after the initial sound.

The 2008/2009 architectural changes in the house will inevitably alter the sound by adding new reflective surfaces, but they will not vastly improve it, because the alterations will impact only a small percentage of the total surface area of the house and an even smaller percentage of its total volume in cubic feet of air. These expensive architectural changes alone will not fully address the Eastman Theatre’s acoustical problems.For example, box seats are being added to try to break up massive reflections from the widely separated walls. This could be accomplished

8

far more inexpensively by mounting adjustable reflectors on the same walls, which would allow ‘tuning’ the hall. The box seats are a one-shot gamble on efficacy, literally cast in stone, or at least in steel and wood. Sound heard in the box seats will be at least as bad as that heard currently in existing seats along the walls. With the box seats (which George Eastman purposely eschewed), win or lose, the game is over for at least another thirty years, if history repeats.

What is direly needed is a brief period of broad-based discovery, to include RPO and Eastman musicians (apparently for the first time) in the roles of interviewees and of listeners, and to possibly include a second opinion from a well-published Ph.D. physicist and acoustician who knows and lauds Christopher Blair of Akustiks, Eastman’s acoustical consultant. That physicist, who in December privately indicated to me his interest, would be named and invited when appropriate. [See my correspondence with this third-party acoustician, linked at the end of Stirring the Soup.]

Selected photographic thumbnail comparisons with other halls are provided, including shoebox, modified shoebox, and fan-shaped halls, pointing out what works elsewhere, compared with what currently does not work at the Eastman Theatre.

A plea is made toward thinking-outside-the-box, or at least off-the-stage, by experimenting with a shell-less ‘thrust stage,’ extending forward of the present stage (depending upon sightlines). At the problematic Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, a shell-less thrust stage has been very well received, bringing to the audience more immediacy of sound, as well as a warmer sound. Avery Fisher has some of the same inherent acoustical problems as the Eastman Theatre, most particularly poor early reflections within a massive volume of air.

A highly placed U of R official wrote recently, “What the actual ultimate effects will be of the impending renovations on the acoustical sound will not be known until [after they are completed and] we do some thorough sound checks.” […] “…in spite of the reams of acoustical analysis, and although it’s 2008, acoustical precision on renovations is still a very fuzzy process. If it weren’t, Avery Fisher Hall would never have had to be re-done as many times as it has.” Such a statement fails to inspire confidence.

The current philosophy of “louder, bigger, brighter at all costs” is horribly wrong, particularly when forced upon a space that cannot support it. Distorted higher decibel levels are being forcibly extracted

9

from the Theatre for the sake of ‘impact,’ and impressiveness, with blind disrespect for what once the Eastman Theatre offered musically, and could again.

Fortunately, the unpredictable effects of the 2008 “Phase Two” physical alterations inside the house would pale in comparison with the positive effects of a thrust, shell-less stage as at Avery Fisher Hall (first choice), or of drastically altered shell angles in place on the stage (third choice), or of some combination of the two (second choice). The reasons this is so are presented in pellucid detail in the text and photographs that follow.

Shortly after the initial release of this paper on May 23, Leo Beranek, one of the most experienced and respected architectural acousticians in the trade, wrote, “You have definitely laid the problem out and have suggested a direction to consider.  I am interested in seeing how this develops.” [Quoted with permission] http://www.leoberanek.com

Letter to City Newspaper June 24, 2008 (reproduced below link):http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/news/letters/EASTMAN+THEATRE%3A+Renovations+won+t+fix+the+acoustics/

EASTMAN THEATRE: Renovations won't fix the acoustics On Jun. 24th, 2008 - City Newspaper

The acoustics of the Eastman Theatre have been poor since completion of Phase One in 2004. The sound is muddled in the orchestra seats, owing to acoustical "shadows" caused by inappropriate shell angles. The upper balcony seats, once offering the best sound, are now excruciatingly bright. Musicians have a harder time hearing themselves inside the new shell.

Adding box seats and reducing seating will only partially address the problems. Worse, the box seats cannot be flexibly "tuned," as could far cheaper acoustical panels.

Sound has always been poor near the walls. There is no reason to believe it will be any better in box seats.

10

In 1924, Times-Union music critic AJ Warner wrote of the Eastman Theatre: "Its acoustics are regarded as among its most notable features, for one can hear perfectly in any corner of the great structure, so carefully has it been designed."

There is no record of acoustical complaints during the early years of the theater. We went off track somewhere, and particularly so in the louder-brighter 1972 renovations, highly touted at the time.

Thirty years later, the University now admits that those changes didn't sound good. Will it take another 30 years to admit the much worse travesty of 2004-2008? "Louder, brighter, more impact" has pushed the Eastman Theatre beyond its genteel capabilities. Classical music is suffering.

The anomalies are largely "corrected" when the equalized, well-aimed sound system is employed, but then it is just like listening to a huge stereo. Theater sound systems do not sound as good as real music - only louder; offering quantity over quality.

Eastman's acoustical consultants, Akustiks, recently designed a new orchestra enclosure at the fan-shaped Hilbert Circle Theater in Indianapolis. The enclosure angles cause the same acoustical shadowing as does Akustiks' shell at the similarly fan-shaped Eastman Theatre. In Indianapolis, Akustiks specified continued use of an existing sound system for classical concerts. Caveat auditor.

Reducing seating from 3,094 to 2,250 this summer sounds impressive, toward more intimate acoustics. But there will be little decrease in the hall's total volume. All the air space up to the chandelier and back to the rear of the balcony will remain.

Please visit http://sirhute.com/eastman-acoustics.htm for a further link to an in-depth non-technical analysis with lots of photos and sound files, including suggested solutions.

BOB LAIRD, SODUS

(Laird is a longtime RPO patron.)

11

Eastman Theatre Acoustics: Stirring the Soup

1) Louder and BrighterThe ear is at first intrigued with a change in sound. If a stereo’s treble control is advanced so as to add more presence (brightness) during a quiet passage, the ear at first prefers it so. The ear also prefers the subjective fullness of slightly louder sound over slightly softer sound.

Still, there are limits. Enhancements that seem acceptable at softer volumes can sound pretty miserable during a full orchestral crescendo, converting massive power into a piercing shriek.

'Louder and brighter' has happened twice to the Eastman Theatre, once in 1972 and once in 2004. As well in 2004, a very loud and very quick echo, or 'slapback,' was brought to the fore. The slapback is part and parcel of the blurred sound heard in some seats by audience members, and it likely contributes as well to the auditory confusion onstage which since 2004 has made orchestral ensemble more challenging for the musicians.

'Louder and brighter' very often seems exciting and desirable in the near term, but too often it goes over the top. It is understated power, unenhanced simplicity and transparent warmth which engage the heart longer term and forevermore.

Before 1972, The Eastman Theatre had these qualities. Not in spades, as in Boston, Amsterdam and Vienna, but discernibly, especially as heard in the upper balcony.

Great art of any discipline invariably presents a sense of capacious headroom. In a passionate musical performance there is compelling tautness as musicians proceed in effortless balance toward each successive level of intensity. Strength is offered with ease, never straining or shrieking. This is ruined, or is at least weakened, by a hall that itself shrieks or otherwise muddies the music on its way to listeners’ ears.

The Eastman Theatre since its 2004 renovation merits no acoustical cigar, nor did it after its renovation in 1972. Both changed the sound of the hall; neither improved it. Both failed to maintain the natural diminution of the harmonic series (smooth roll-off of upper partials), and failed to sustain the native sweetness of accurate phase relationships, each of which is paramount in service to the sound of live classical music.

12

Before blithely hacking and tacking through Phase Two in the house of the Eastman Theatre, there absolutely must be a period of discovery involving RPO musicians and Eastman musicians as listeners and as interviewees.

It has been immensely irresponsible to exclude such people thus far. It is even quite atypical of the modus operandi of Akustiks, the hired acoustical consulting firm, as reported about their members’ projects in Cleveland and Nashville. Sadly because of what looks like, walks like, and talks like isolated hubris, the misguided 2004 attempt to project a louder likeness of the pure sound of the Orchestra is a dismal failure. The 2008/2009 add-ons won’t help much.   There remains great hope in terms of ditching the 2004 shell and adopting a thrust or partially-thrust stage (depending on sightlines), as at Avery Fisher Hall. The shell simply is not working! Ask the musicians! This could be done at any time, and with little regard to the probably unstoppable juggernaut of Phase Two changes to the house at the Eastman Theatre.

It will take a remarkable leader to ditch the shell. Such person will quickly attract many relieved followers, freed to emerge from the shadows of impolitic whispering into a healthier mode of proactive argument and even of assistance. Short term, such leader will be taking a risk. Longer term, such person will be roundly thanked for restoring both musicality and the academic freedom to speak out in house and elsewhere in support of all aspects of music.

Akustiks is the hired help, not some august final arbiter. Dr. Undercofler is gone. Must the mantle be rigidly inherited, warp and woof? Of course not!

2) The Sound and the Patron

RPO patronage is directly related to how good the RPO sounds to its patrons.

A patron's commitment to support the Orchestra and to attend concerts is inevitably impacted by whatever she may feel at a gut level about the sounds she is hearing. Her psychological response to the sound (not the musicianship) of the RPO in the Eastman Theatre may be largely subliminal, and thus difficult to track or to quantify.

It is impossible to gauge how many more patrons would be attracted, and with what greater frequency of attendance, by an enticingly natural acoustic in the

13

Eastman Theatre. Presently a simple and ingenuous acoustic is "not known, because not looked for," to borrow from T.S. Eliot.

To make matters more confusing, the current acoustic is presented to patrons as some sort of great improvement. In fact, the acoustic has merely greatly changed, and greatly for the worse.  It is presumptuous to foist ‘enhanced’ musical sound upon listeners, believing them jaded by continual exposure to our present noisy world. A good concert hall is one that offers refuge from clamor, not competition with it. A good hall encourages audience members to quiet themselves and listen.

It is misguided to try to emulate at Eastman the sound of a vastly different hall (Severance Hall in Cleveland; see below), without first examining the factors that contributed to the broad acceptance of the Eastman Theatre’s acoustics during its initial several decades. This was the case right up through the world-famous Mercury recordings of the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra and the Eastman Wind Ensemble in the Eastman Theatre ca. 1960.

3) Mercury, Hendl, and a Dearth of Logic

The purist Mercury recordings of the late ‘50’s and ‘early ‘60’s were accomplished in an empty Eastman Theatre, with the thick velvet stage curtains of that era removed, and with three omnidirectional microphones hung high above 10th row center, and left, and right.

The best sound I ever heard in the Theatre was during the sunset of that same prolonged era of shell-less, curtained stage, when around 1970 Walter Hendl guest-conducted Pictures at an Exhibition with nearly a full house. He had largely de-curtained the stage for the performance. The sonorities and their impact were magnificent.

Obviously Hendl knew something of acoustics and of the Eastman Theatre’s potential. But at that time there was considerable frosty distance between the fractious Orchestra management (the Civic Music Association, or CMA) and the Eastman School of Music, of which Hendl was Dean. His single demonstration of greatly improved sound fell victim to the CMA’s dull conservatism and a residual Victorian need to drape everything in thick velvet.

14

After the Eastman School finally admitted thirty years after the fact that the three million dollar 1972 acoustical renovation had turned out less than satisfactorily,* it was illogical to base a twenty-first century renovation (2004/2008) upon that starting point. The new 1972 sound, which itself was highly touted and well received at the time, was wrong toward brightness and harshness, but it was not nearly as bad as what happened in 2004.

The proper resource from which to work would have been the original admittedly unwieldy Eastman Theatre itself, bare naked, ca. 1922. But now once again we are about to blithely ‘further improve’ the Theatre’s acoustics by building only upon its most recent acoustical disaster, that of 2004. _____________________________________________________*In 1968, George C. Izenour participated as a theater consultant in a design study for remodeling and restoring the Eastman Theatre. A five million dollar initial renovation proposal resulted, after which the very different three million dollar 1972 project emerged. The five million dollar proposal had included eliminating the “acoustically shadowed” Mezzanine and re-sloping the Orchestra Level floor to improve vertical sightlines. This would have reduced seating capacity from 3,200 to 2,500. The recovered Mezzanine space was to be remodeled into control rooms and recording studios. [Source: Theatre Design, Izenour 1977.]

4) An Orange Canopy Live acoustic music of any genre offers potentially the same refreshingly natural experience to music lovers as does a walk through a virgin forest to nature lovers. For all of our time spent awash in the approximated sound reproduction of iPods, elevator music, and the average car stereo, there remains something subliminal within us that lusts for and resonates with naturalness. An honest acoustic supports music without overtly calling attention to itself, much as a forest canopy protects and supports all that richly transpires beneath it. In the venerable Eastman Theatre, it is as if the underside of the canopy has been spray-painted bright orange, casting everything below in an unsettling light. In fact, there is no need for metaphor: Consider the actuality of the clear coating that since 2004 has greatly increased the reflection of sound from the walls of the Theatre. The acoustical effect has been to call untoward attention to the newly 'updated' sound, including a newly evident discrete echo, or slapback, that the Theatre now imposes upon listeners and musicians alike.  The sound heard in the house is also harmed by the new orchestra shell, because the shell walls’ obtuse* angles do not match the more greatly

15

obtuse (fanned) angles of the house walls. These discontinuities yield an acoustical shadow in Orchestra Level seating, where there is no reflected sound except from longer paths.

Additionally, there are only close-in near reflections to the house from the shell’s ceiling, because of its minimally obtuse angle and its great discontinuity with the Theatre’s ceiling. Later in this paper, this unfortunate situation is compared photographically with its antithesis at Severance Hall.

In fact, the dearth of near-reflections is probably making the slapback seem relatively louder and more objectionable by comparison. No shell at all would be better, and less piercingly loud, precisely as in the pre-1972 Theatre.

Prior to 1972, taking up the carpeting and de-curtaining some of the stage would have been a far better way (and a far cheaper way!) to allow the sound to bloom, and to allow a bit more reverberation in the then shell-less and thickly stage-curtained hall. Instead, the new reflective surfaces of 1972 added a bright ‘presence’ peak to the hall, unbalancing its previously glorious octave-to-octave integrity all the way down into the deepest bass. Any reflective acoustical environment inevitably colors sound produced within it, but less is more. The original Eastman Theatre conveyed a preponderance of accurate phase relationships and naturally diminishing upper partials in the harmonic series. Such happy circumstance constitutes a concert-goer's virgin forest—a respite from clamor. 

At the Eastman Theatre presently, such natural acoustic simplicity is not known because it was not looked for during the alterations of 1972 or in 2004. Instead, overblown sound and fury, as so often considered desirable in amplified popular music, was foisted in 1972 and then greatly further foisted in 2004 upon acoustic classical music in the Eastman Theatre. _______________________________________________________*The two divergent shell wall angles are obtuse with reference to the shell’s back wall, looking toward the house.  

16

5) Some Informal Interviews My informal polling of RPO concert-goers indicates that many in the audience have bought in to the 2004 acoustic as an 'improvement.' Well, so did many in 1972. Both changes were louder and brighter. Both were strongly sold and quickly embraced. The 1972 changes ultimately did not wear well. By 2035, will people be itching for yet another change? To quote a former Eastman School Professor and musician, now engaged elsewhere, ". . . my [listening] experiences in the new [2004] hall . . . have not provided me with an impetus to go and hear more.” 

To quote another experienced listener: “I sat in the upper balcony (left side) …” […] “The sound was at times excruciatingly loud and bright. The violins were so piercing I had to cover my ears.” […] “While some of the orchestra was easy to hear (brass, basses), I found it hard to sort out many of the blended woodwind parts and cello/viola lines. Mostly it was just punishing when loud, and muddled when not loud. Another patron agreed.” […] “I didn’t much care for the old [post-1972] Theatre sound. But I like this [post-2004 sound] less, especially upstairs, where the better sound used to be found.”  To paraphrase a current RPO violinist, 'Since 2004, sound from the brass players on the opposite side of the stage seems sometimes delayed as heard at my stand, and it can be difficult to gauge ensemble by listening. It has become all the more imperative to watch the conductor, while disregarding my own ears. A certain conductor will at times ask the stands around me to play more on top of the beat, indicating that we are dragging slightly. At times I notice a very quick apparent double attack on discrete sounds I hear at my stand. We sound louder to ourselves in the new shell, but in terms of ensemble it is a jumbled loudness lacking in clarity.’ To paraphrase another RPO violinist, 'Since 2004, orchestral ensemble as heard at my stand has become rhythmically imprecise. At times I feel almost that I should just 'air bow' so as not to contribute further to the mess. Personally I believe the biggest problem is that the brass cannot hear the strings.'

Paraphrasing a third RPO violinist, ‘It is difficult to hear ensemble onstage. At times I have to watch peripherally the body language of other players to try to meld better with them. Although I had not thought of the problem as related to a slapback echo, it is possible that something like that might be a part of the difficulty.’

17

Paraphrasing an RPO brass player, ‘We do sound louder to ourselves within the new shell. It is possible that because we now so easily fill the stage with sound, we are therefore more or less subconsciously lightening our tone production instead of ‘filling the hall’ with sound as before. That may explain your listening experience in the Mahler, in which we sounded less than fully committed to the sonorities of the music.’  What is going on, onstage? Have the laws of physics been locally altered by the 2004 renovations? Does louder sound from the brass travel more slowly than before laterally across the Eastman Theatre stage to the strings?

At least one violinist reports a very fast, distinct ‘slapback’ echo, which more logically could be what is making the brasses sound delayed to the strings. There may be just enough length to the reflective paths onstage, including the very high ceiling, to exceed the 20-millisecond minimum delay required to perceive an echo as a discrete event not integrated by the brain with the initial burst of sound. Or it may be that the slapback currently heard in Orchestra seating is also returning to the stage, courtesy of the newly enlivened hall. Or both.

A respected Eastman School faculty member who prefers anonymity has confirmed that the 2004 changes have had “awful results,” and doubts that changes planned for 2008 will help much. Are politics impeding the best interests of music at the Eastman School? So it seems. There is no other explanation. Few if any persons at Eastman are insensitive to sound, yet absolutely no one else has spoken out.

Whatever the source of the delayed sound onstage, a slapback theory would comport well with complaints from the podium that the violins, but not the louder brass, are dragging. In other words, at times the violins might be playing predominantly with the loud slapback of the brasses’ sound, 20 or more milliseconds delayed at their stand positions. Removing the shell ceiling would be a viable experiment (see below), to determine to what extent it is involved in reflecting confusing slapback onstage.

To be fair, one should point out that if everybody is very closely following a precise and assertive conductor, and/or is sensitive to the nearby body language of colleagues, good ensemble results despite whatever acoustical misinformation is arriving at various stands. No doubt such good ensemble does generally result from the stalwart RPO musicians. But energy usurped in resolving cognitive dissonance can hardly benefit the music.

18

During many past decades of Eastman Theatre history the Orchestra received very little of its sound reflected back to it onstage, in particular during the era of the heavily-curtained and shell-less stage, prior to 1972. At that time, in an empty hall you could speak normally onstage and be heard quite well in the upper Balcony. Conversely, a person standing even down in the front of the Balcony (the “Loge”) had to yell clearly to be understood onstage. This situation was noted by the musicians, but it never seemed to interfere with the music they were able to produce over all those years. 

Now we have a brave new era in which orchestral sound heard on the stage is significantly louder but jumbled. The musicians are indeed awash in more sound than ever before, but that sound is confusing in such a way that playing together is made more difficult than ever before, at least at some stand positions.

A good experiment would be to simply remove the shell ceiling by parking it in the fly space for a concert. Reflections onstage from the ceiling are a tiny bit delayed at the players’ ears, muddying the sound they hear. Without a ceiling the musicians would hear each other less loudly but more clearly. Although the house’s slapback, if audible onstage, would be then be relatively louder as heard by the musicians, a net gain might be achieved in clarity, toward sorting out ensemble.

At some point after the 1972 shell was put into use, I went backstage after a concert and observed that the major element of the two-element floating ceiling over the musicians was missing. Had this been accomplished on purpose, or was there some problem with the rigging or the winches? Is there a record of a conductor’s requesting that that ceiling panel not be deployed?

6) A Broad-Based Discovery Process for 2008/2009

I have been told by several Eastman School people and by RPO musicians that the immensely handy listening resource represented by Eastman faculty musicians, student musicians, and RPO musicians was left utterly untapped during the 2004 renovations. Involving them would have been messier, but worth it. One RPO violinist remarked to me that acoustical matters are not considered by Management to be the concern of the musicians who produce the sound. Some of the RPO musicians would have a good deal to contribute, if invited. Why

19

were they not included in a ‘discovery’ period before construction began in 2004, in evaluation afterwards, and more recently in looking toward Phase Two beginning in the summer of 2008?

There is little room for hubris while planning, executing, and evaluating improved service to music, any more than there is room for it while playing music. Classical music centers upon a heartfelt desire to share qualities deeper and greater than those of any individual, no matter what important or even pivotal role an individual may temporarily inhabit.

There is no dishonor in being acoustically waylaid by a tricky hall, or by a customer’s specifications and/or last-minute strong wishes. There certainly is dishonor in stonewalling, should that ever be allowed to occur.

The dean of American architectural acousticians, Leo Beranek, presided over unsatisfactory initial results at the 2700-seat Avery Fisher Hall, given a last-minute demand by the customer (increased seating, requiring a departure from the initial ‘shoebox’ design). Even to date, after many changes, the hall might best be described as rather adequate; a Carnegie Hall it is not. The good news is that recently there has been very positive experimentation with a thrust stage.

Are Paul Scarbrough and Christopher Blair of the consulting firm Akustiks immune to similar circumstance at Eastman? The last minute customer-demanded coating of the Eastman Theatre walls, while physically minor compared to the last minute structural changes at Avery Fisher, certainly altered the acoustics in a previously unplanned manner. Even the angles of Eastman’s orchestra shell must have been dictated by customer requirements, because from a purely acoustical standpoint they just don’t make sense. (More on this below.)  If anyone at the U of R or Kodak truly cares about the sound of this renovation as much as about its glitz, it is imperative that a short period of discovery be mounted right now. Third party opinion should be sought and weighed. As well, numerous musicians should be involved as interviewees and as listeners.

Below is a quotation from Akustiks’ own Paul Scarbrough, spoken after the completion of the year 2000 Severance Hall renovation, the home of the Cleveland Orchestra. [Boldface mine]: 

"What we called the 'discovery' phase was critical. This included extensive interviews with the conductor, Musical Arts Association, and musicians. We would hear things

20

such as 'Severance Hall has a warm sound,' but no two musicians use the term in the same way, and we had to reconcile their vocabulary, largely artistic, with the science of acoustics." - Paul Scarbrough http://livedesignonline.com/mag/show_business_preserving_severance/

7) Goose Bumps

At the Eastman Theatre in 2008, foreshortening the Orchestra seating and tacking on a few box seats will not alter the hall’s acoustical characteristics sufficiently to remove the blurriness in Orchestra Center seating, remove the harshness in the balcony, remove the slapback, and remove the sonic confusion onstage.

This is so because the hall’s problems are largely not coming from, or much influenced by, the areas to be altered.

For example, the Orchestra seating underneath the Mezzanine is soon to be abandoned as the Orchestra level is foreshortened. This presently sheltered area is well damped during concerts by its seats and by the warm bodies therein. Thus it is acoustically absorbent. As such it is one of the least likely sources of the hall’s slapback echo.

On the other hand, to the extent that any component of the present slapback may be bouncing off the hanging front of the Mezzanine, then building a new wall underneath the Mezzanine front that greatly increases its reflective surface area will actually increase the loudness of the slapback!

None of the house alterations will address and improve the condition of poor early reflections into the acoustically shadowed Orchestra seating. However, either a thrust stage or altered shell angles would do so.

The primary purpose of the box seating is to help break up reflections of sound off of the divergent house walls farther out in the hall. The boxes will do so only over a small percentage of the immense total surface area of the newly-coated reflective walls, and the lowest boxes will break up reflections hardly at all.

There are immensely cheaper ways to tame reflections. Hang a few tapestries. Mount dispersing reflectors whose angles can be readily changed. Adjustable reflecting panels would be infinitely easier to alter after completion than are

21

box seats. Nobody really knows 100% in advance just how the new box seats will alter the sound, and they certainly cannot be fine-tuned.

The box seats hugging the fanned walls will sound at least as bad as do present Orchestra seats near the walls, and sightlines to the stage from the spreading walls, upon which the box seats will be mounted, will be rather poor.

Box seating will provide an excellent view of the opposite wall. The artist is vague about the new wall to be built under the lip of the Mezzanine, and about which seats are to be removed.

A potential view from a lower box seat. The sound will be even worse than it is from current seats near the fanned house walls. Will box seats be cheaper than the good seats?

22

Finally, the alterations in toto will reduce by only a small fraction the total volume of the hall in cubic feet, up to the chandelier and back to the rear of the balcony. The house will be essentially just as cavernous as it is at present.

All propagation paths and distances related to the timing of all echoes and slapback in the house will remain essentially unchanged. Specifically, such sonic paths are between the stage and all other reflective surfaces in the hall, such as the back of the Balcony, the front hanging surfaces of the Mezzanine and the Loge, and the broad, flat, divergent side walls.

As with implementation of any physical change, the sound will automatically be altered to a certain extent as new reflective surfaces of various shapes and angles are added. It is quite easy to alter sound; it is more difficult to gain a net improvement. To further confuse things, the ear may be intrigued initially with the novelty of an altered sound that ultimately will not wear well. This happened in 1972 and again in 2004, to many ears. Caveat auditor.

We humans are gullible. We wimp out in the face of misinformation or partial information repeated long enough and often enough. Politicians know this. Artful dodging becomes accepted as truth by busy folk whose competencies lie elsewhere, and who prefer simply to accept without examination the statements of others when it comes to a less than rigorous discipline with which they are not familiar—in this case, architectural acoustics.

"Stop being such a God-damned sissy! Why can't you stand up before fine strong music like this and use your ears like a man?" - Charles Ives, at a 1931 concert of Ives's and Carl Ruggles's music, after a man booed during one of Ruggles's works.

Ive’s principle applies as well to standing up and using our ears to become more consciously aware of our experience of an acoustical space and its effects on music. Many strong and successful women and men in the audience at the Eastman Theatre are quite capable of using their ears to listen for themselves consciously and independently. We need not be concerned if we lack a lexicon of descriptive terms or a handbook of formulae to apply, simply because our respective areas of competency happen to lie elsewhere.

Please recall this quotation shared in the Précis, above, from a highly placed University source: “…in spite of the reams of acoustical analysis, and

23

although it’s 2008, acoustical precision on renovations is still a very fuzzy process.”

In fact the least fuzzy and most pragmatic evaluation is immensely simple and wordless: How often in the current Eastman Theatre do we find ourselves leaning forward with goose bumps to lustily embrace the sound of the music? Conversely, how often do we just dig in and put up with the sound, or even cringe from it (consciously or subconsciously), for the broader sake of respecting the music? And (this one is a bit harder) how often do we simply not know what we are missing?

The medium is the message, or at least it is the only way the message arrives at listeners’ ears. A good deal of the message is being lost within this present medium at Main and Gibbs. Some of it is lost in soup, some in harshness. It is easiest just to put up passively with this state of affairs, failing to recognize that the situation can and must be improved for the sake of the music.

Only after the soup and harshness have been removed may we become aware of all that we had been missing. Far beyond the limited results of the planned hacking and tacking in 2009, the most promising way to remove the cringe factor and the blur would be to place the Orchestra on a shell-less thrust stage as far out in the house as sightlines will allow. Then would the forgotten joy of musical sound be restored to the Eastman Theatre, as in its golden years.

David Zinman sensed this possibility, but he didn’t take it far enough. He experimented with a forward orchestra position, but short of actually extending a thrust stage. Even now, on nights when the orchestra is moved forward to accommodate a chorus, some patrons note a better orchestral sound in the house. Once again, the reason for this is that the discontinuity of shell angles as compared with house angles becomes then a lesser factor in the equation. That factor would be zero from a shell-less thrust stage within the house.

8) The Eastman Theatre vs. Severance Hall

The acoustical problems that yield a ‘blur factor’ and a ‘cringe factor’ in the Eastman Theatre are not mere generalized reflections. The problems are related to the existence of huge homogeneous wavefronts reflected from just a few widely separated huge homogeneous surfaces.

To oversimplify for the sake of clarity, in the Eastman Theatre such massive reflected wavefronts bang harshly into the initial wavefront generated by the

24

musicians on the stage. Violent ‘comb’ effects of extremely complex mathematical phase cancellation and addition (varying with wavelength) result in thinning and brightening the frequency response heard in the hall. A related extremely rapid coherent echo ‘slaps’ upon some seat positions in the hall, and upon some stand positions onstage.

Paul Scarborough of Akustiks has said of the Severance Hall (Cleveland) stage "...the randomizing of shapes helps the acoustics." The same principle of randomizing is evident in the house at Severance, and numerous halls known for good sound take Severance’s highly variegated approach to dispersal of sound.http://livedesignonline.com/mag/show_business_preserving_severance/ Severance Hall has a lot of randomized reflecting surfaces, and it has had many of them since it was built in 1931. The Eastman Theatre offers nothing but a few huge, essentially flat or linearly curved reflecting surfaces, which it has had since its completion in 1922, and to which box seats will soon be added more for glitz than for sound.

Most of the reflecting surfaces at Eastman should be altered in topography in order to purposely disperse (but not absorb) sound in as many directions as possible and over as broad a range of frequencies as possible. The new wall to be built at the rear of the soon-to-be-shortened Orchestra Level should be similarly designed.  RPO musicians would hear each other better onstage if their shell incorporated the Severance shell’s many convex ceiling panels (dubbed "pillows"), which better disperse the players’ sound within the shell than does Eastman’s more geometric shell ceiling. 

The side and rear panels of the Severance shell are also slightly bowed, further reflecting and dispersing sound amongst the musicians onstage.

“The entire shell, in fact, was created primarily for the musicians. Reflecting the sound so the musicians can hear one another is a great step toward ensemble performance. "The old shell reflected the sound toward the audience, but the new one enables the musicians to hear each other more clearly." - architect David Schwarz, speaking about the year 2000 Severance Hall shell, boldface mine. [Same referenced link as above.]

25

For these and other design reasons, Eastman has ended up with something of a lesser shell than Severance's, at least insofar as musician-friendly topography. There are useful reflections and there are confusing reflections. Since 2004 we have the latter, both onstage and in the house.

The whole of Severance Hall's topography is and always was far more lushly variegated, in bas-relief Art Deco with a dash of Egyptian Revival, than is Eastman's simpler Italian Renaissance Revival theme. That variegation is one reason why Severance sounds better; in a word: dispersion.

However, a far more significant reason that Severance sounds better is that the angles of the side walls and ceiling of Severance’s shell better match the angles of the house.

[The scenario limned immediately below is meant as a thought experiment to ‘stir the soup.’ It is intuitive and possibly accurate, but it is proposed without benefit of the techniques of interferometry that acoustical consultants have at their disposal.] At Eastman the players' sound:

Bounces around loudly in the shell as heard by the musicians, and reflects toward the house along the insufficiently splayed* angled surfaces of the sides and ceiling of the new shell.

Then, owing to that insufficiency, the sound fails to strike and bounce off of the suddenly more greatly splayed house side walls and the greatly discontinuous house ceiling. This creates a ‘shadow’ of weak early-reflected sound throughout Orchestra seating.

Then the sound hits something, likely the heavily painted, curved, focusing fronts of the Mezzanine and Loge, and bounces off them back toward the stage. This echo is heard as a ‘slapback,’ first in the Orchestra seating and then onstage, at similar loudness to the initial outbound (‘incident’) wave, but very slightly delayed. 

After bouncing off the focusing curved surfaces, portions of the reflected sound wave encounter the splayed house side walls this time at an acute angle, and diffract off of them, smearing a hazy delayed reflection back into Orchestra seating. This artifact is the acoustical parallel of fogged glasses or a fogged windshield, insofar as it interferes with the ability to resolve detail. A similar artifact may be operative onstage from refraction within the shell of the same delayed returning sound wave.

26

______________________________________________________________*The two divergent shell wall angles and the shell ceiling angle are obtuse with reference to the shell’s back wall, looking toward the house. Of itself, that is fine. It is as a result of discontinuity with the suddenly more divergent planes of the house walls and ceiling that an acoustical shadow is created in the Orchestra Level seating. For further details on this phenomenon, please see An Acoustically relevant Letter from a Friend, reproduced at the end of this paper.

The potential for slapback and blur was always inherent in the geometry of the hall, but those artifacts have come to the fore because:

The (obtuse) angles of the 2004 shell walls are less splayed than were those of the 1972 shell walls. There is now a greater discontinuity with the angles of the house walls. The present shell ceiling angle differs in similar fashion, having now a greater discontinuity with the house ceiling.

This creates a broad acoustically shadowed area in Orchestra seating in which direct sound and early-reflected sound is less loud than are later reflections.

The sound from within the shell is actually quite loud (and quite jumbled as heard by the musicians), but because of the inappropriate shell angles it is not directly incident upon the Orchestra seats. This makes the slapback and blur more audible, as a greater percentage of the waveform heard in Orchestra seats. That waveform, after all, is nothing more than the loudly jumbled shell sound itself, reflected to Orchestra seats not directly, but via various indirect paths. A sense of ‘spaciousness’ is felt, but it is a false and confusing spaciousness which impairs resolution of musical detail, just as fogged glasses impair resolution of visual detail.

The problem may be resolved via one of the following approaches:o Make the side and ceiling angles of the shell more obtuse, ideally

matching the house angles, as at Severance Hall. (Rather difficult to accomplish.)

o Discontinue the use of the shell, except perhaps for formal convocations. It is not working. Ask the musicians!

o At least experimentally, and with attention to sightlines, relocate the Orchestra to a shell-less raised platform forward of, or partly forward of, the existing stage. Seat some concert-goers behind the orchestra and along the sides. Please recall Avery Fisher Hall’s recent very well-received thrust stage, ameliorating acoustical problems that had lasted for decades.

27

Below is a dramatic photo of the massive curved sound-focusing and reflecting surfaces in the Eastman Theatre. The hanging fronts of the Balcony (“Loge”) and of the Mezzanine are involved, as is the wall at the rear of the Balcony. The effects of these transverse surfaces are heard now more strongly in our livelier 2004 Theatre.

Eastman Theatre. The focusing curvatures of the Balcony and Mezzanine fronts are greater than rendered by this head-on view. The echo slaps back sharply upon listeners and musicians, both directly and also after striking and bouncing from additional surfaces, including the ceiling. The ceiling does not receive any directly incident sound from the stage, due to the shell ceiling design.

How will building a wall under the front of the Mezzanine, and hanging a few box seats forward of the Mezzanine, somehow magically tame strongly focused delayed reflections traveling directly from these curvatures toward the stage?

Reflections from the front of the Mezzanine and the front and rear of the Balcony will be little affected by these changes. In fact there will be a new and greatly enlarged reflective surface introduced by a new wall right underneath the already reflective front of the Mezzanine.

How will those same almost perfunctory changes (as a fraction of the total area of the newly coated walls) stop huge havoc-wreaking reflections from zigzagging off of these splayed, very widely separated side walls (which are more greatly divergent than this photo reveals)?

28

9) Severance Hall 2000: Conserving a Pre-Existing Silk Purse

An Eastman School employee with an office and a desk told me that it was largely on the basis of a visit to Severance Hall that representatives of the U of R were convinced to hire Akustiks to consult on the Eastman Theatre. Was there an implication that the Eastman Theatre might be made by Akustiks to sound like Severance Hall?

It bears mention that when first visiting the Akustiks website, much credit seems taken by the firm's Principal for the post-2000 acoustics of Severance hall in Cleveland.

In fact, nothing acoustical was fundamentally changed at Severance Hall in 2000. All changes were additive. Yes, there was a new orchestra shell, but the old one had already sounded great, and the redesign was done principally to match the décor of the house, a trait not embodied by the old shell. The house seats were replaced and some surface treatments altered. A series of new room-sized resonating chambers on either side of the stage may be employed, or not. Care was taken also to calculate the acoustical effects of contiguous areas partially open to the hall.

The point is that the sound of Severance Hall had been universally acclaimed ever since a new shell was designed and constructed in 1958, ten years into the Szell era. At that time, also, the stage was divested of a proscenium and drapes, and in the house some carpet was removed. For 2000, refurbishing and modernization was the primary goal, while carefully maintaining the Szell-era sound. 

So the purpose of the new shell was to better match the decor of the rest of the house, while very carefully not impairing Severance’s renowned sound. As with the 1958 shell, the 2000 shell was sand-filled to add mass. The obtuse angles were essentially the same as before.

In 2000 an additional two-tenths of a second of reverberation was gained in the house, a nice touch, but related primarily to reduced absorption of sound by the new seats, along with applied selected surface finishes.

Essentially, Akustiks’ Principal may share credit (with his previous firm), for not messing anything up acoustically, and for increasing the reverberation time. That is no small accomplishment, but it is not the same thing as creating a silk purse.

29

Below is a magnificently composed photo of the 2,000-seat Severance Hall, taken with a fisheye lens from the rear of the balcony. Note the alignment of the shell’s walls and ceiling with the walls and ceiling of the house, and also the dearth of huge flat surfaces.

Note also how well damped are the side walls by warm human bodies. Surely those well-dressed bodies absorb more sound than did the untreated Zenitherm lining the Eastman Theatre’s walls. Maybe the concertgoers lining the Severance walls should be wearing plastic raincoats to better reflect the sound?

Severance Hall: The shell is very much a part of the house.

On the next page are two more views of Severance Hall. The first photo emphasizes the angled side walls of the shell as directly in-line with the angles of the house walls — the antithesis of the Eastman Theatre’s current shell angles and house angles.

The second photo reveals variegated bas-relief decorations and other varied reflective surfaces throughout stage and house. The flowing curves of the sound-reflecting ceiling ‘pillows’ drooping from the shell ceiling aid in mellifluous dispersion of the sound to the players.

30

Severance Hall: The shell walls (and ceiling – only implied in this shot) are essentially in line with the house walls and ceiling—the antithesis of Eastman’s shell.

Severance hall: Nary a flat surface to be found. Sound-dispersing ceiling ‘pillows’ curve sinuously along the shell ceiling, with convexly bowed panels on the lower sides and rear.

31

Note two things in particular about Severance Hall:  

1) There are highly variegated means of desirable dispersion within the shell and house of Severance Hall, as opposed to the huge, essentially flat or uniformly curved surfaces in the Eastman Theatre. 2) Even more importantly, the Severance shell is much more an integral part of the hall, including the ceiling, than is Eastman's shell. Severance, while not a 'shoebox,' couples the stage more directly with the house than does Eastman, somewhat in the manner of the many classic shoebox halls in which the orchestra felicitously shares the same acoustic space with the audience.

Below is the floor plan of the year 2000 Severance Hall, viewed from above. The shape of the shell is shown in broken lines beneath the tan-colored organ loft. (The oval represents the front lobby):

The Severance Hall stage and house is not a shoebox, but it is pretty close to a shoe, and one with a well-integrated shell.

Similarly to all great shoebox halls, the orchestra at Severance shares much the same homogeneous acoustical environment with the audience, playing from one end of that shared environment.

32

10) The Eastman Theatre 2004: The Crux of the Matter, and a Proposed Solution

Below is a photo of the 2004 shell at the Eastman Theatre, showing the shell as quite clearly a separate entity from the huge hall. Sound from the shell is fed into a separate vast house space, as compared with Severance Hall’s more homogeneous sharing of the orchestra’s sound within the hall.

Eastman Theatre, 2004 shell. 

The Eastman Theatre, 2004 version, has greatly discontinuous planes of shell walls and house walls, as well as a great discontinuity between the hidden (curtained) shell ceiling and the house ceiling. This configuration creates in the Orchestra seating two broad triangular acoustical shadows with their apexes at the reflex angles forward of stage left and stage right, in which near-reflections are lacking.

The 1972 shell angles more nearly matched the house angles than do the angles of the 2004 shell.

33

Below, the 1972 shell and massive angled ‘eyebrow.’ Note the somewhat more confluent angle of shell side and fanned house wall. This setup sounded worse than did the shell-less theatre in its glory days, but a little louder. The 2004 shell (along with the treated house walls) sounds even louder, and much worse:

Eastman Theatre, 1972 shell.

Note, above, the huge angled ‘eyebrow.’ Both the ‘eyebrow’ and the multiple slim rectangular panels serving as a shell were made of plastic-coated steel. Not visible are the two horizontal ceiling panels behind the ‘eyebrow,’ which could be deployed (or not) over the musicians. At one point I noticed from the stage that the larger of the two horizontal ceiling panels, directly over the orchestra, had not been deployed for the RPO concert just ended.

Below, the Eastman Theatre is shown in a ca. 1972 architectural drawing. A shoebox or shoe the Eastman Theatre is not, but were the Orchestra to play

34

from a thrust stage within the house, immediacy, warmth, and balance of sound would improve, principally because of the removal of all discontinuous obtuse angles from the acoustical equation.

Eastman Theatre 1972:  The shell angles more nearly matched the house angles. The three different-sized trapezoids above the stage represent the panels of the 1972 shell’s ‘eyebrow,’ center ceiling panel, and rear ceiling panel respectively. It was the center ceiling panel directly over the orchestra that had been removed when once I looked up from onstage during that era.

 On the following page is a crude estimate of sightlines from the Balcony to a partially thrust stage (the short red horizontal line at the bottom). The Mezzanine sightlines appear more problematic. The pitch of the Mezzanine seating might be increased, made possible by extending the mezzanine lobby elevation toward the stage and abandoning the last three or four rows of seats.

Note the oblique red line above the stage representing a proposed much more house-integrated angle of the shell ceiling, if indeed a shell is still to be used. Without a shell the sound would be warmer and clearer (and not as pushy-loud), but if a shell is used, the angles of the shell’s side walls should match the angles of the house walls and should directly involve the house ceiling. Avery

35

Fisher Hall has found more immediacy and warmth in using a thrust stage without a shell.

The shell pictured is the 1972 shell, which provided better early reflections from its huge angled ‘eyebrow’ to the Orchestra Level seats than does the 2004 shell’s more recessed and less-angled ceiling. Here we see the right side edge of the ‘eyebrow’ and of the two other floating ceiling panels of that era. Again, it was the middle panel that I observed was missing immediately after a concert. Did that ‘breathing space’ above the musicians help the players to hear themselves better than do the present louder and more jumbled onstage reflections?

Eastman Theatre 1972: Sightlines crudely estimated to partially thrust stage. The short horizontal line at the bottom is the stage extension. The sharply oblique line is the shell ceiling, well-integrated with the house ceiling for better sound, and also capable of much greater projection of near-reflections from onstage, if that is still found desirable.

36

_______________

Saving Classical Music on the Mezzanine

If changing the pitch of the Mezzanine seating in order to improve sightlines to a thrust stage is impossible, let’s think way outside the box and provide several huge flat-screen video monitors on the present 405-seat Mezzanine Level. Invite the wireless Millennium Generation to enjoy live concerts up there! Convert the mezzanine into a Classical Internet Café with free Wi-Fi.

Contract with a Starbucks franchise (the concept is bound to intrigue Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz, despite some recent Corporate belt-tightening), or else invite Java’s, to operate it daily as a Classical Internet Cafe whether or not there are Eastman or RPO concerts or rehearsals going on at any given hour.

During concerts, and at all other times as well, encourage blogging, pod-casting, Internet chatting, online research, and working on school assignments. Gamers would be required to use ear buds.

Forget printed concert programs for these Millennium Generation Mezzanine patrons. Instead provide an interactive webpage about the concert in progress, replete with a link to Hilary Hahn’s website, and with links to information about other vital young classical musicians.

Hire a musically knowledgeable person to text answers to questions about the concert, the instruments, and the music (in real time, during concerts). These potential new patrons are used to multitasking, and Web-based or cell-phone texting is often their preferred means of exchanging information, even with a friend across the room.

Like it or not, this is the way of the youngest generation, and a revamped Mezzanine with “random” seating might

37

be found a very cool venue by them, as we sneakily expose them to classical music. Let people in for free, and create steady cash flow day in and day out by leasing the space to Starbucks, or maybe to Java’s as Javalternate.

Allow optional Windows Media Player-like abstract visualizations on the customers’ laptops and also on the huge monitors, rendering visually the live sound occurring onstage.

When there is nothing going on onstage, play videos of accomplished young musicians engaged in committed playing of Bach unaccompanied violin sonatas and partitas, or the cello suites.

Play the Mozart Horn Concerti. Play the scintillating C major fugue from Beethoven’s Op. 59 No. 3. Make it clear that the quartet was published 200 years ago. How many of our currently ubiquitous pop composers will so resonate in the year 2208?

If these patrons (yes, patrons—definition expanded to embrace change) are too noisy, the front of the mezzanine might be sealed with acoustically inert bank teller-thick clear plastic. The house side of the clear plastic should probably be angled upward to largely remove its sonic reflections from the equation. One-way viewing out into the Theatre might be implemented so as not to distract musicians onstage or interfere with formal events such as convocations.

In such a sonically isolated Mezzanine, high quality monitor speakers would be required, set only at moderate volume, and with compressed dynamic range. One should not presume that the primary reason for showing up on the Mezzanine is to listen to the Orchestra.

You won’t find me (well maybe not) on that brave new Mezzanine, or any other purists. But you will just

38

possibly be reaching out and saving live classical music. That is, until the Venezuelans, starting with Conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s planned outreach in Los Angeles, teach us how we might have done it all along, and prove in the U.S. the benefits already attendant in Venezuela.

Laugh if you like, but this is precisely the sort of novel inclusion of the millennium generation, and embracement of change, that will be featured prominently in the press when first it is implemented.

Psychologically, the feeling of autonomous interconnection from within a sort of nexus overlooking a world ‘out there’ seems likely to appeal to this set of patrons.

It is appropriate in this fast-paced world to interface with youth as they are and on their own terms, in order to offer them an opportunity to discover classical music. Getting used to hearing it in the background in an Internet café, with the ability to peer out once in a while and watch it actually happening in the real world, is not a bad start.

_______________11) Kleinhans Hall

Kleinhans Hall (below) in Buffalo NY is similar in shape to Eastman, although slightly smaller (2839 seats) and not so broadly fanned as Eastman. Notably, the shell and its angles are completely integrated with the house. The side walls and ceiling of the shell, as well as the side walls of the house, consist of multiple staggered panels to break up the reflected sound into smaller wavefronts.

39

Kleinhans Hall

Of Kleinhans (above) it has been said:

By Dimitri Mitropoulos:  "The most perfect music hall in the world." By Serge Koussevitsky: "Kleinhans Music Hall is the dream of a lifetime

—perfect and complete." Unattributed review: “The hall has a crisp non-reverberant acoustic

which assisted in the soloists’ words being heard”

12) Loudness vs. Musical Accuracy

Bottom line, the new (2004) Eastman shell looks sort of OK, but that is about all that can be said for it. It has not helped the RPO musicians to hear each other better in any collective sense. Nor does it convey any sort of relaxed and homogeneous sound to the house, because it is poorly integrated with the house. 

40

An audience member may retreat from the nearly palpable thick blurriness in the middle of Eastman’s acoustically shadowed Orchestra Level seating, and seek refuge in the rear of the upper Balcony. There historically and even now the best sounding seats are found, as at Carnegie Hall. However since 2004 in the Eastman Theatre the new shell projects the violins way up there with a piercingly louder, thinner in-your-face sound, and it over-projects the brass. A mid-bass resonance from the newly sprung stage ‘enhances’ the upper bass while relatively weakening the lowest bass. The newly-coated side walls of the house merely make everything worse, like bright mirrors in strong sunlight. If such problems as slapback, harshness, and blurriness are to be truly addressed and ameliorated, the present overblown loudness will have to be diminished in the name of warmth and clarity. This may be accomplished by hanging tapestries on the walls and/or by mounting adjustable dispersing reflectors thereupon, variegated in shape and size. (Italian Renaissance reflectors, but of course.) A thrust stage might obviate such need, by generating from the get-go a warmer and more immediate sound, to be also reflected as warmer and more immediate sound.  'Loud and impressive' works naturally throughout smaller halls. In a larger hall the sonic price of enhanced loudness may be too high, and indeed that appears the case at the 2004 Eastman Theatre. In a larger hall, well-balanced quality of sound trumps mere loudness of sound foisted upon the audience for the sake of loudness alone. Loudness is not more desirable than is accuracy.

Again, loudness is not more desirable than accuracy. This is why sound systems are a bad idea, except as a last resort. Their output never precisely matches their input. A sound system is incapable of savoring and sustaining the clarity and ingenuous sensitivity of live acoustic music.

13) Numerical Reduction in Seating vs. Reduced Total Volume of the Theatre

For 2009 at the Eastman Theatre, the planned reduction in seating from 3,094 to 2,250 sounds at first like a massive change. But this surgery is to be localized underneath the Mezzanine and along the side walls underneath the new box seats. The full height and depth of the hall in cubic feet all the way up to the chandelier and back to Balcony Rear will remain unchanged. All of that

41

space will still need to be sonically excited, so the actual potential to ameliorate the blur, the screech and the slapback echo, will be minimal.

The area to be altered under the Mezzanine is presently a cavity well-damped by the seated patrons’ clothing. As such it is the least likely source of the slapback, screech and blur; therefore altering that area will not ameliorate any of those artifacts. But as noted the new wall may make them worse. The new box seats are two few and too isolated, and some are too low, to have much effect on harsh transverse reflections off the walls.  There is every indication that the results of Phase Two, while exciting in many important aspects external to the house and stage, will not include the advertised acoustical panacea within the hall itself, any more than did Phase One. Both Phases are built upon previous error, and not upon the truth of the Theatre itself.  

14) The Balcony at the Eastman Theatre

Eastman's original 3000+ seating suggests a hall too big for sonic intimacy and impact. But there are many flowers on many hillsides. Conductors are strongly imprinted upon the particular intimacy and impact that is part and parcel of their livelihood at the locus of the podium. If they or their assistants wander about a hall to listen, that is usually done, and sectional balance adjustments made, in an empty hall during rehearsal.

What a conductor hears as an occasional audience member in other halls may simply be better in some respects than the cavernous Eastman Theatre can support. Apples to pears, as it were. An RPO conductor would gather the most pertinent site-specific sonic information if he could wander freely about a full house in the Eastman Theatre, while someone else conducts the RPO. The wandering conductor should try to divest himself of predilections not supportable by the Eastman Theatre.

It is possible to push a ‘pear’ hall too far in an attempt to emulate ‘apple’ halls, and this is what happened at the Eastman Theatre in 2004. But pears have their own sweet taste when properly cultivated.

In a packed house, there are other valid concert perspectives beside that of the podium. The upper balcony in the Eastman Theatre was always a superb place to hear well-balanced intimate details in a full house, with warmth, clarity, and

42

with an accurate if not absolute representation of dynamic range (ask any Eastman School student over the decades). Admittedly the sound levels up there in the heyday of the Theatre would not part your hair, but few denizens of the upper balcony ever complained, given all the other pluses.  Since 2004, the sound up there remains yet clearest, but it no longer blends together with clarity. It now incorporates a disquieting thinness and shrillness, and some mid-bass ‘boominess’ (likely from the newly-resonating stage floor), all of which the ear interprets as 'louder.' The sounds of the various orchestral sections no longer meld up there. The effect is not unlike an exploded mechanical drawing of some monumental appliance, each component starkly revealed, but lacking in representation of the whole as greater than the sum of its parts.

Notably as well (intriguing, but not detrimental) there is a bit of a 'railroad spike' or 'blacksmith anvil' effect up there, as the arm motions of the conductor are seen a split second before the sound arrives, so great is the distance.

15) A Thrust Stage at Eastman?

Anything that takes the RPO out of its resounding separate box and allows a more direct hemispherical acoustical coupling with the entire hall will improve the sound.

Beginning on the following page, please view a group of photos of halls worldwide that to good acoustical effect observe the principal of orchestral inclusion within the hall at one end of it, rather than orchestral segregation in a separate acoustic space on a stage, and from there projection of sound into the hall.

Also note the general use of variegated reflecting surfaces as opposed to monolithic flat or linearly curved surfaces. Most provide near-reflections to the players via a wall of modest height at the back of the orchestra. But there is no enclosed shell and ceiling to render a loud but muddled sound to the players.

43

Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa CA. Where is the shell?

Lucerne, Switzerland. Note audience seating behind the orchestra and chorus. No shell.

44

A hall in Denmark: All European halls, even the newest ones, put the orchestra and the audience in the same space. No separate shell.

Sibelius Hall in Lahti, Finland. Where is the shell?

45

Credicard Hall, Sao Paulo, Brazil, built 1999. Where is the shell? Well, at least Rochester has some strangely-scaled columns.

Symphony Hall, Boston. A superb-sounding shoebox hall, with shell. The sides and ceiling of the shell integrate well with the house, rather like Severance Hall, except that at Boston they are greatly fanned from the rear of the stage to the front.

46

Of course these halls (in the above photos) are mostly all shoeboxes. It is unfair to compare them, and the orchestra’s position within them, with a fan-shaped hall. Or is it?

Avery Fisher Hall, pictured below, was built as an oversized distorted shoebox with a conventional stage. It has benefited dramatically since employing a temporary new shell-less stage thrust 30 feet into the audience. Renovations call for a permanent thrust stage. The thrust stage has “lent an intimate ambience to the cavernous Avery Fisher Hall and proved hugely popular with audiences.” – NY Times, 2005. ''It sounded much warmer and meatier,'' said Zarin Mehta, executive director of the Philharmonic. ''And it looks more intimate, because it makes the hall shorter.'' – NY Times, 2004.

There are certain rough parallels between Avery Fisher and Eastman, in terms of huge volumes of air and poor near-reflections. With very little expense a thrust stage (a performance platform forward, or partly forward of the present stage and shell) could be tried at the Eastman Theatre.  

A rendering of the thrust stage at Avery Fisher Hall. Where is the shell?

47

Is a renowned University capable of thinking outside-the-box, or at least off-the-stage? Might we dare try such a thrust stage (a temporary stage extension as far forward as sightlines allow) for a concert series of six weeks, running the gamut from Mozart to Messiaen? Why not? What is the downside? The cost would be miniscule, at least if you discount embarrassment over the money wasted on the 2004 shell, which sounds bad, confuses the musicians, and no longer even fits together very well.

A little empirical learning about our hall would not be out of place beneath the staid thicket of theory and unwieldy variables that has led us to this current mess. It would be so simple and easy to try a thrust stage setup and just listen. Just feel the goose bumps. The shell really should be retired from musical use, and relegated to formal convocations.

Some of the audience should be seated behind the orchestra onstage, and also at the sides of the orchestra, as in some shoebox halls. All of those warm and well-dressed bodies privy to the Conductor’s countenance would partly damp the backwave, while the rest of the sound breathes in freedom, generated within the hall, a more intimate and integral part of the hall, and of the listeners’ experience, than ever before.  If the musicians at first feel lost in so large an unaccustomed space, they would have to glue their eyes to the podium or to each other no more intently than at present, as their ears currently deceive them about ensemble. As well, by moving the Orchestra forward into the hall, the interval of the slapback echo would shorten and better integrate with the incident sound.

Variegated reflectors mounted on the divergent side walls on the Theatre could be angled back at the orchestra platform to return more relatively immediate reflected sound to them, if that is found desirable. In such a shell-less acoustic the strings would glow, the woodwinds would be lyrically incisive, and the brass would sound richly burnished, as a relatively greater proportion of powerful lower frequencies would occupy the total sound envelope (with no harsh near-reflections of the highest frequencies bouncing around inside a boxy shell). The true octave-to-octave balance of the Theatre would be restored in all of its glory, and possibly better than ever before. 

From such a house-integrated platform, the Theatre’s natural reverberation curve would be excited. The pre-1972 Eastman Theatre's 1.63 seconds of reverberation, occupied (as measured by Leo Beranek in 1959), was pretty decent, favoring clarity just slightly over ambience. There is ambience

48

(reverberation) of honest timbre and there is ambience that alters timbre unmusically, as is now the case at Eastman. In the case of the old Eastman Theatre, on the Mercury Living Presence recordings one hears reverberation with an honest and solid octave-to-octave characteristic, albeit in an empty hall.

Even the recently coated house walls might begin to actually make sense, although there is no guarantee of that. Hardening the walls was not necessarily a bad idea in principle; it was just unknown territory within this specific iteration, and poorly—or not at all—empirically researched.

In divesting the shell, the bright and jumbled near-reflections from inside it would no longer zing so piercing a treble sound at musicians and audience alike. The coated walls would then just dutifully reflect that warmer sound throughout the hall. The phase problems and comb effects alluded to early on in this paper will not go away entirely, but they are most harmful to sound that contains a lot of ‘brighter’ treble frequencies.

It is highly likely that Phase Two’s changes to the house will proceed on time as planned. But it is a pity if the poor-sounding box seats cannot be stopped and that money applied to less expensive and more flexible means of fine-tuning the hall after completion.

Qualified third-party opinion about the box seats should be solicited and weighed. Without the box seats, some would be able to point out that we never got to hear the hall as planned. Thus would a certain amount of face be saved about the theoretical efficacy of Plan A, even after far more cheaply and happily implementing Plan B. No one who can listen will ever sit in those box seats, at least not more than once.

The good news is that none of the extremely expensive advertised 2008 changes to the house have the potential to hurt the sound nearly as much as a shell-less thrust stage or re-angled shell has the potential to help the sound, principally by getting rid of obtuse shell angles that are discontinuous with the house walls, and by making music within, or more nearly within, the same acoustic space that the audience shares.

16) Function Funneled into Form

For entirely too long in the Eastman Theatre, function has followed staid, unexamined form. Since 1972 the U of R has tried in one way or another

49

to overlay ‘improved’ acoustical functioning upon the standardized and long-unquestioned form of stage and house. That physical form was George Eastman’s design solution for what was principally a silent movie theatre in which also concerts were played.

The overlays (shells, surrounds, massive eyebrow, sealed walls, etc.) have worked poorly, and have actually impaired native 1922 acoustic functionality. They have constituted merely new and different Band-Aids applied in the aftermath of misguided prior Band-Aids, while never simply allowing the patient’s skin to breathe. Before the Band-Aids, less was once more. 

After the first two seasons of the Eastman Theatre’s operation, A. J. Warner, “Music-Editor” of Rochester’s Times-Union newspaper, published an article about the Eastman Theatre and the School of Music in the January, 1924 edition of Musical Times. Here is an excerpt from Mr. Warner’s article [boldface mine]:

“The Eastman Theatre is an auditorium seating 3,568 people. Its acoustics are regarded as among its most notable features, for one can hear perfectly in any corner of the great structure, so carefully has it been designed.”

Mercury Records recorded Gershwin’s “Concerto in F” and “Rhapsody in Blue” with pianist Eugene List and Howard Hanson conducting the Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra in the Eastman Theatre, ca. 1960. At that time no shell was being used for Orchestra concerts, nor was one used for the recording sessions. Here is what Mercury had to say about the bare-naked hall on the back album cover of vinyl recording SR90002 [boldface mine]:

“The recording was made in the Eastman Theatre in Rochester, New York, a building distinguished for its beautiful acoustical properties.”

There is no record of early complaint about the Eastman Theatre’s acoustics. Eastman School Historian Vincent Lenti’s thoroughly researched For the Enrichment of Community Life: George Eastman and the Founding of the Eastman School of Music lists a goodly handful of internationally famous guest artists of that era. There are no complaints logged.

50

Surely among those famous folk were egos of sufficient heft to complain, and to complain loudly, had they discerned something wrong with the sound. Seriously, we are talking the likes of Willem Mengelberg, Eugene Goosens, Fritz Reiner, Jascha Heifetz, Mischa Elman, Josef Hoffman, Alfred Cortot, Vladimir Horowitz, Ignace Jan Paderewski, Beniamino Gigli and Rosa Ponselle, all during the first decade of operation of the brand new Eastman Theatre.

Even a current Rochester Philharmonic webpage relates that of the Eastman Theatre in the 1920’s, “It is said to be acoustically perfect and was designed to provide the same comfort and enjoyment for all patrons regardless of the ticket price.” http://www.rochesterphilharmonic.com/volunteers/eastman.htm

Eastman Theatre 1920’s. Note the huge dark curtains looming over and defining the front of the stage. It appears that the orchestra is in position to accompany a silent film. Most of the musicians are quite far forward on the lip of the slightly lowered front part of the stage (behind the pit guard rail). The orchestra is not really in the pit. A stage set extends the house motif with widely-angled walls and no ceiling, back to a second curtain which opens to a movie screen on the fixed portion of the stage.

The obtuse wall angles of the set would seem to match rather well the fanned house walls (not visible), while providing highly variegated near-reflections to the orchestra. This may be the closest

51

thing to a ‘thrust stage’ the Eastman Theatre has ever seen, and it may be the principal reason for the unequivocal strong approval of the sound of the Eastman Theatre during that era.

At some point after the silent film era ended the Orchestra moved deeper into the stage, no longer thrust so far forward, and no longer supported acoustically by such an appropriately-angled set, capable of providing such variegated near-reflections. Decades later we have become restive under long-unquestioned traditional assumptions about strictures of stage and house.

Times have changed to noisier times. That does not automatically mean our concert halls need be changed to noisier concert halls. The venerable Eastman Theatre was never even capable of several decibels more loudness, without in the process divesting its originally so well-received sound. But that is precisely what has happened, in mindless sequence over the decades.

Here we are now, without a clue as to what A. J. Warner and Mercury Records were crowing about, or about what a very long-term Eastman faculty member recalls of the gorgeous sound of the Vienna Philharmonic on the shell-less, curtained stage of the Eastman Theatre way back when. It's not that one could never have wished for a livelier hall. Mid-century, Leinsdorf wanted to tear up the carpet. Hendl took the less drastic step of simply raising the valance curtains and partially opening the side and rear curtains that constituted the 'shell' back then, emulating to some extent the setup for the famous Mercury Records Eastman Theatre recordings.

In fact, a return to a largely de-curtained shell-less stage, while not visually glamorous, would be a tremendous ear-opener in its own rite, short of a thrust stage. Again, this would be principally because of greater continuity of the stage and house angles.

The question is, how much of the birthright of the Theatre are we willing to trade away semi-permanently for some passing contemporary belief that all music must be ever louder-brighter-in your face, with the impact of a rock band* and the rich depth of field of a pancake?

It is of the nature of human fickleness that this, too, shall pass. But a refreshing hike through virgin forest never goes out of style. __________________________________________* “…the ubiquity of rock music, with its grotesquely exaggerated high frequencies, habituates people not only to some extremely bad music, but also to excessively bright sound, so that natural symphonic music can sound dull…” – Robert Greene in The Absolute Sound, issue 111 September/October 1997

52

16a) Hearing is Believing

There is recorded evidence that hints of past glory, of what we have long lost and might yet regain.

A trumpet fanfare to start: Here is Howard Hanson speaking in the Eastman Theatre during its shell-less glory days, ca.1960. He introduces a trumpet fanfare from his composition Merry Mount Suite.

The ambience around his voice, and around the juicy trumpet trio harmonies, is the true sound of the old shell-less Eastman Theatre. You can even hear a muted slapback, in this case predominately from the rear of the balcony.

The three trumpets bask in that friendly acoustic, brilliant but never harsh. You will not find this gorgeous sound in today’s Eastman Theatre. More has become less, to the detriment of music and to the detriment of the listener:

http://sirhute.com/howard-hanson-introduces-trumpet-fanfare.mp3

Haydn House at http://www.haydnhouse.com/ offers a historical audio collection transferred from mint vinyl to Compact Disc, which includes three even earlier recordings made in the Eastman Theatre. The following three sound clips predate by at least several years the famous Mercury sessions produced by Wilma Cozart, of which the fanfare excerpt, above, was one.

These recordings are of Howard Hanson conducting the Eastman Rochester Orchestra in the then shell-less Eastman Theatre. The recordings were made approximately a decade earlier than was the Hanson speaking/trumpet fanfare, above. They are monaural, not stereo, and they have traces of the intermodulation distortion typical at that stage of recording technology and vinyl playback.

Even so they capture very honestly and directly the sound of the Eastman Theatre in the shell-less pre-1972 era. In my opinion they do so in some ways better than do some of the later Mercury recordings.

There is a particular majesty to this sound, a sense of revealed musical inevitability, as if things could not be unfolding in any other way. It is not much of a stretch to say that the affect is reminiscent of that of the repeated surging motive in Verdi’s opera, La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny). There is a strong sense of inevitability to the sound of music produced and

53

heard within this grand original acoustic, as if the music should be no other way, could be no other way.

This is absolutely the honest acoustic of the shell-less pre-1972 hall. I remember it well. Note the richly authoritative octave-to-octave balance down into the deepest bass, the clear acoustic space available for each instrument, and the opposite of muddle or screech.

Close your eyes as you listen to these three samples from Haydn House. You will sense clarity and a direct connection with the music. Even in the monaural sound you will be able to visualize a depth of field that simply is not available in the acoustically overblown, in-your-face, present-day Eastman Theatre:

http://www.haydnhouse.com/mp3's/HANSON%205h%20%20BARBER%201st%20%20Excerpts.mp3

In the Hanson, enjoy the tremendous power and clarity of orchestra and chorus.

At the end of the Barber excerpt, the spectral balance of the hall’s (unoccupied) reverberation is heard clearly after the staccato final note of the phrase. Occupied reverb in those days sounded very similar in duration and quality, maybe because of the huge volume of air and many hard reflective surfaces extending well above the audience.

[The prominent bass trombone heard immediately before that staccato chord would be Donald Knaub, a much-loved Eastman School maven of the day. Knaub brought real musicianship to the bass trombone, and was also capable of playing as earthshaking a fortissimo as any conductor might conceivably allow.]

http://www.haydnhouse.com/mp3's/PISTON%20HANSON%204.mp3 The best of these three early samples. The bass lines and tympani

solidly underpin the incisive brass, triangle and percussion – ever brilliant but never over the top, never screechy as in today’s Eastman Theatre.

Note the clarity of the balance between strings and brass. This was a small string section sometimes fleshed out with just a few student extras. It was no Philadelphia Orchestra of its day, but even while playing a piece heavily scored in this manner the shell-less pre-1972 acoustic prevented the full-tilt brass from overpowering the strings.

http://www.haydnhouse.com/mp3's/MacDowell%20and%20Hanson%202%20Excerpts.mp3

54

Although the least well-recorded of these three excerpts, evidencing overly zealous gain-riding or compression, there is still an ingenuous directness and a degree of reserved majesty that comes through.

This, dear Patrons, is what we have lost. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

17) Slapback Redux and a Final Note about Those Box Seats

At the rear of the balcony there is a 'railroad spike' or 'blacksmith hammer' delay between the visible downbeat and the audible sound. If doubled, that delay significantly exceeds the delay of the slapback currently heard in Orchestra Center and as heard onstage. (It equals the delay of the echo heard in the Howard Hanson/trumpet fanfare excerpt, above.)

In other words the slapback heard currently in Orchestra seating and at some stands onstage is significantly quicker than is the elapsed duration of time for a round-trip sonic transit to the far upper rear of the balcony and back. Therefore the slapback is likely bouncing off the much nearer fronts of the Mezzanine and Loge before returning to ‘slap’ at listeners and musicians. The treated walls and the acoustic shadowing caused by the shell are certainly exacerbating matters.

The reflected wavefront would also glance and smear off the divergent side walls from a far smaller (acute) angle of incidence than did the outgoing wavefront, which was essentially unaffected by any contact with the suddenly more obtusely angled house walls immediately forward of the stage. Thus, upon echoed return there would be ‘sprayed’ into Orchestra Center a general blurriness and sometimes shrillness. This is audibly the case now.  Akustiks can certainly computer-model the hall to see how possible or how ridiculous this thinking is. Actually the firm should already know very well what has been going on for the past four years, although it is not the sort of credit to post on a website.  Making the side walls behave less like divergent planar acoustic mirrors is one possible way to improve things. The box seats, however (according to the drawing in Eastman Notes, above), are to be hung too far back on the side walls to have any great effect toward breaking up and dispersing reflections from the broad expanse of the flat, hard, coated ‘wall-mirror’ forward of them and above them. 

55

 Although stylish, and surely a great place to be seen, I am not sanguine about any sonic benefit from sitting in the boxes. The sound will be at least as bad as it is currently in seats nearest the walls far right and far left.

The egalitarian George Eastman, who purposely eschewed box seats, may groan and turn in his grave. Still, Eastman did offer a workaround for the elite: He originally intended the Mezzanine as a well-appointed semi-private area in lieu of box seating. How deliciously ironic to entertain the thought of utilizing it as a Classical Internet Café! 

18) Less Would Be More Acoustically at present in the Eastman Theatre we are experiencing the inverse of Browning’s words on painting in Andrea del Sarto ("Yet do much less ...—so much less! Well, less is more, Lucrezia...”). Ironically it is at the end of this same poem that Browning avers "...man's reach should exceed his grasp." 

Hmmm… man's reach should exceed his grasp, but less is more. Ah paradox! Or does reaching conservatively for less exceed grasping for more, which in surfeit has proven to be actually less?

Well, if the shoe(box) fits . . .

High time to end this chapter, eh?   

19) A Note about Humidity, Instruments, and Sound at Eastman* Low humidity is not the friend of pianos, strings and woodwind instruments (or of drum heads). Worst case, all such instruments can contract and crack. Their tone under conditions of low humidity sounds generally thinner and harsher because of altered mechanical resonance as the wood contracts and becomes more brittle.  Singers are more at risk of sore throats in dry conditions.  Beyond humidification's benefit to instruments and to singers, a bit of extra water vapor in the air of a concert hall tends to smooth the aggregate sound of the entire orchestra, as additional water molecules absorb the highest frequencies wherein lies the most potential for harshness. The lack of such

56

absorption in the air is another reason that instruments sound brighter and thinner in low humidity.   The new air handling system is to be quieter, and as of the fall of 2009 the air will be humidified far more consistently than now, with a standalone dedicated humidifier in place for the first time ever at Eastman, but only at 30% relative humidity, the legal limit without a variance. Steinway says their pianos prefer 45% to 65% stable relative humidity. So do the other instruments cited above, and singers like even more. Obtaining a variance would have been better, but unofficial workarounds exist that will make possible raising the relative humidity at least somewhat above 30% on all but the very coldest days. On extremely cold days, however, careful consideration must be given to potential damage from condensation/effervescence throughout this venerable masonry building. This consideration is programmable, i.e. on a near-zero degree day the humidity can automatically dial back below the probable dew point.  Ideally it would be good to seek some way (with a price tag on it, of course) to provide zoned humidity, that is, greater humidity in the Eastman Theatre, in the two recital halls, and in the instrument locker areas, as well as in other sensitive areas. Although water vapor spreads out evenly in the air along a pressure gradient, there might be (expensive) ways to circulate more highly humidified air where it is most needed.

So far as infiltration of moisture into the inside walls, leading to harmful condensation and effervescence on cold days, there are ways to provide vapor barriers on the surfaces of inside walls. In fact, the acoustically unfortunate polyurethane-like coating recently applied to the Zenitherm in the Theatre may do just that, at least for the Zenitherm.  As things stand, by 2009 the relative humidity will be made more consistent, but it will hardly be made ideal. So, after 86 years of concerts at the Eastman Theatre, the RPO’s violinists will still be leaving their their many Strads and Guarnerius fiddles safely at home, alas. Even guaranteed 30% humidity bodes poorly for instrumental safety—if less poorly than that of the sacrificial violin in Eight Songs for a Mad King. Just think how all those luscious Cremona fiddles would have sounded, though, but for a variance requested and received! Season ticket sales would have soared.

*The unequivocal willingness and openness of a mechanical engineer at M/E Engineering P.C. in discussing freely with me their role at the Eastman Theatre stood in stark contrast to the rather pompous suspicion I encountered from two acousticians at Akustiks. Neither firm knew me.

57

20) Respect and Gratitude All of this soup-stirring, and comic relief, is offered with ongoing appreciation and gratitude for everything that makes the RPO musically possible, including the respected musicianship on the podium and amongst the Orchestra members.

One also greatly appreciates all those who, along with their daily administrative tasks, perforce undertake risks in planning and execution on behalf of the future of orchestral music in Rochester. It is far easier for a writer to criticize after the fact than it is for others to initiate proactive changes while crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. It is also far easier, and only human, for those in charge to stonewall rather than to bring dispassionately open minds to further solution of unexpected problems. Still, the ability to selflessly review and reconsider past choices and to make course corrections, or even to backtrack toward grasping a greater good previously overreached, is a lovely human quality indeed. As with most lovely human qualities, its loveliness resides in selflessness.

I refuse to believe that such selflessness does not exist among certain responsible and well-meaning movers and shakers who find themselves either willy-nilly or for hire in the midst of these matters. A large wad of spent money does not automatically grant access to acoustical Valhalla, which according to legend has five hundred and forty doors of entry. Might we try another?  No one is exclusively right all the time—not administrators, not acousticians, not conductors, and no, not even concerned writers. But after all, it is not about being right; it is about the music, and about responding creatively to exigency.

’Tis better to speak and remove all doubt that one is a fool . . . for the sound and content of classical music.

__________

58

Afterword

Near the end of May 2008 I revisited the Eastman Theatre, showing up at a free band concert. My intention was to move around in the house (in-between selections) to review my impressions of the sound, and also to check sightlines.

I encountered two serious disappointments.

First, it was obvious that thrusting a stage more than five feet farther forward just wouldn’t work, with reference to sightlines. Sightlines from Balcony, Loge and Mezzanine are hairbreadth-tuned to the lip of the existing stage.

Still, if natural acoustic sound quality is ever again to be considered truly paramount in “Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre,” here is a brave new solution:

Go for it! Sightlines be damned! Thrust the stage into full acoustical glory, as at Avery Fisher Hall.

String several huge video screens laterally across the top of the stage. Farther back in the hall, and stacked, mount screens jutting out from the upper side walls of the house.

Install several robotic cameras capable of pan, tilt, and zoom, and hire a musically trained video producer (with one assistant) to run the show. For the first time ever, patrons will be able to see more than just a single immutable view of the musicians and the back of the conductor’s head.

On various screens, provide simultaneous close-ups of the conductor’s face, orchestra sections, soloists within sections, a guest soloist’s face and hands at the piano or violin, a view from above the orchestra, a view from the rear of the orchestra, and scrolling stock market closings (well, maybe). Dissolve occasionally to a panoramic display of the orchestra across all of the lateral screens over the stage. Optionally at intermission show a related interview, with the associated audio available over cell phones or over headphones provided by the Theatre.

Within about ten years, as the screens begin to wear out, holographic techniques already extant will become cheap enough to allow floating the entire virtual orchestra high in the air for all to view from the Mezzanine, Loge and Balcony (while discreetly invisible from beneath!)

59

All of this is, except for the holography, is essentially what has been available in the living room for quite awhile from PBS, so far on only one screen at a time.

But . . . as if to resonate in resounding agreement with this very Zeitgeist, a recent PBS HD Met broadcast of Tristan und Isolde featured, as I tuned in during the during the love duet, a lovely split screen technique. Four different camera angles focused on the lovers, each angle tastefully complementing the others, to great synergetic emotional effect. Then . . . after the duet, six screens! Three screens . . . five screens . . . dissolve to one screen . . .

Where have I been? Is this technique brand new to the Met Broadcasts? It matters not; the point is that here is the competition, now.

My humble stereo at home happens to sound warmer, more intimate and clearer than does the present Eastman Theatre. The Met broadcasts are free. They offer a visual feast that is presently impossible at Main and Gibbs. My couch is more comfortable than are Eastman’s seats… I leave the completion of this logical progression to the reader.

Modern audiences of a different ilk are used to viewing varied images at basketball games or in bars. Can anyone recall the dull days past when from high in the bleachers one obtained just a single distant viewpoint upon all that was going on way down there?

Why must that remain the case at “Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre?” For some minor portion of ten million dollars (Kodak’s contribution) or of thirty-five million dollars (total), might we not try offering the public an experience at least as rich as they can find in their own living rooms?

Consider that the single unique quality of live acoustic classical music is its natural sound, as compared with the sound of home theatre and with the sound of all other forms of electronically reproduced musical entertainment. By disrespecting that signature element, as has already happened at “Kodak Hall at Eastman Theater,” the future of classical music therein is grim, if not lost. My couch beckons.

What is the point of attending a live classical concert if it sounds merely like a powerful stereo, and if one’s single view of the concert is set in stone from one relatively distant perspective—visually far less involving than are most multi-media productions?

60

By respecting and facilitating natural sound, the single unique element of live classical music—its sound—is conserved. At the same time via huge video monitors, John Q. Modern-Public will feel better informed, better connected, and more at home than ever, before a live multi-screen classical music performance at Kodak Hall that also just happens to sound [adjective deleted] amazing.

A new patron who is able to relax and feel at home, visually engaged in a more nearly familiar and non-threatening environment, may well return. The relatively unfamiliar sounds of classical music may begin to gradually imprint. Cook the frog slowly, so he won’t hop immediately out of the pot in search of more familiar waters. I am not intending judgment here; only being direct and colorful. The life experience of one who never attends a classical concert is just as valid as my own. But there is nothing wrong with making it easier for anyone at all to explore classical music, should they be even minimally so inclined.

When history books are written, and if nothing changes, it will be recorded that Venezuela revealed to the world the great value of introducing the young—including especially its youth from the slums—to the joys and life-changing power of classical music. Might Kodak and Rochester merit at least a footnote, or did the glory days of the Theatre’s usage “For the Enrichment of Community Life” end permanently in the 1950’s?

The video screen concept, and eventually the holography, remain valid with or without a thrust stage. If (merely to save face!) the present shell must be maintained on the present stage, this leaves the option of greatly improving the sound by moving the orchestra forward on the existing stage à la Zinman, while drastically converging the shell’s side walls at the rear of the shell in order to bring the side walls of the shell in line with the house walls immediately forward of the stage.

It appears that the rear wall of the shell is segmented into three tightly bolted-together segments, as roughly ¼ - ½ - ¼ of the combined total width. It appears further that abandoning the two outer ¼ width segments and converging the side walls to either side of the center rear segment would rather closely align the shell wall angles with the house wall angles. As well, the edges of the segments would abut fairly well cosmetically, for locking together. The rear

61

½-width segment would have to be brought slightly forward to match up with the newly-convergent side walls.

If you look very closely at the following photograph, you will see the vertical seams of the three tightly bolted-together segments of the rear wall, as approximately ¼ - ½ - ¼ of the combined total width. It is to the center section, brought slightly forward, that the shell’s side walls would connect, effectively removing the two presently discontinuous (reflex) angles, left and right, between the plane of the shell walls and the plane of the house walls.

How serious a reworking of the cables and winches would this require, if only just to try it? Maybe pretty darn serious. Ergo this paper’s request for further input, to include strongly qualified third-party input, before taking the next step(s) in the Eastman Theatre.

However, this pivotal step to greatly improve the acoustics could be taken at any time, regardless of whatever else has been done or has not been done to the Theatre.

The Eastman shell’s ceiling (photo on following page) was higher than I had recalled, sufficiently separated from the orchestra below it so that quick echoes from it, even at its slight upward angle, are likely contributing to the jumbled sound onstage.

It should be simple and inexpensive to park the shell’s ceiling out of the way in the fly space for a concert or two. Or better yet (but not so easily accomplished) the upward angle of the ceiling might be greatly increased, beginning low behind the orchestra and leaning forward along a steep incline. This latter arrangement would better project the sound out into the house, while still reducing confusing reflections from it within the shell.

Note (photo on following page) the menacing loudspeakers. Friends have complained that they are too loud at Pops Concerts. Well, of course. As everyone knows, auditorium sound systems are amortized per decibel per second. These speakers are well-designed and inescapable Orwellian transmogrifiers of natural sweet sound into a stuporous false two-dimensional holiday from reality; acoustical soma-projectors at the ready.

62

Eastman Theatre 2004 shell and Orwellian stereo system

63

If you wander across Main Hall into the Eastman School’s existing recital hall, Kilbourn hall (below), you will see that a pretty good alignment of the angles of shell walls and house walls exists there, at least within five degrees or so.

That easily-overlooked small fact happens to be a huge part of the famously homogeneous warm and detailed Kilbourn Hall sound:

Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music

There is yet a place for practical experimentation in the Eastman Theatre, amidst all the number-crunching. There are so many variables involved that the human ear may simply be the best and most sophisticated instrument available for real-time evaluation. And should it not be? The measurements, numbers, graphs and fast Fourier transforms are about the experience. The ear is part and parcel of the experience.

64

Please recall once again the recent words of a highly-placed U or R official (boldface mine).:

“What the actual ultimate effects will be of the impending renovations on the acoustical sound will not be known until [after they are completed and] we do some thorough sound checks.” […] “…in spite of the reams of acoustical analysis, and although it’s 2008, acoustical precision on renovations is still a very fuzzy process. If it weren’t, Avery Fisher Hall would never have had to be re-done as many times as it has.”

All measurements aside, all formulae aside, there remains the need for practical empirical trial as monitored by that most sensitive of acoustical tools, the human ear. This must include musicians’ ears.

For example, it would be simple and inexpensive to play a concert on the present stage from a ‘forward’ orchestra position but with no shell deployed. As in the ancient past, hang velour curtains at the back and sides, but this time use no valance curtains above the front of the Orchestra.

To truly hear the hall, try also a concert with neither curtains nor shell. Such a setup came about of necessity in accommodating the forces for Prokofiev’s monumental Alexander Nevsky about fifteen years ago. This should be the true starting point, the point apparently not ever referenced when slapping on the Band-Aids in 1972 or the new ones in 2004.

Such shell-less configurations would be quite politically incorrect at this point, but they definitely should be tried. Although a shell-less setup has not been heard regularly since 1971, it also has not been heard since coating the house walls for more liveliness in 2004, or since replacing the old horsehair seats in 1972, also bringing more liveliness to the hall. (Now there will be yet another replacement of seats in 2008, to what acoustical purpose, if any, not divulged. But you can bet they will not make the hall any quieter.)

One problem with bundling several simultaneous alterations as in 1972 and in 2004/2008 is that changing more than one thing at a time means that scientific methodology cannot be applied empirically step-by-step in the real world. On paper the aggregate effect is calculated, but the modeling is far from perfect.

65

Too many parameters are altered all at once to gain any audible sense of which change did what to the sound. So for gosh sakes, wherever possible let’s take a couple of simple, easily reversible steps backward and run some audible trials!

Is being right, or being politically correct, more important than serving the music? Is remaining ‘shell-shocked’ a political necessity for the next thirty years before finally once again someone dares admit that this renovation of the Theatre, this Band-Aid upon a Band-Aid, did not turn out well acoustically?

Present some shell-less concert events to the public as “Retro Nights at Eastman,” and be honest that the experiment is one of several different approaches to discovering what has gone wrong with the sound of the Eastman Theatre, by returning to its roots.

Of course first it will be necessary to muster the honesty to admit publicly that this present sound is disappointing, and that predicting the results of Phase Two “…is still a very fuzzy process.”

Everyone involved in Phase One and Phase Two is human. Transparent honesty goes a long way, and brings empathy from other humans. This is not a matter of blame (whether original or inherited), but one of pragmatism and shared responsibility. There are few acoustically trickier spaces than the Eastman Theatre, with its huge volume of air and its widely-separated fanned walls. A Severance Hall Eastman never was. But a far better hall than now it once was, although admittedly less rambunctiously loud.

Great architectural acousticians have been done in before by tricky halls, as was Leo Beranek at Avery Fisher. That happens. But if you look at the gentleman’s rich legacy overall, the Avery Fisher incident—which related to last-minute architectural changes that weakened previous calculations—is seen as just a part of the ball game. There is no dishonor in being waylaid by a tricky hall or by a client’s strong demands. There is distinct dishonor in stonewalling on the part of acoustician and client alike, should ever that be allowed to come to pass.

It simply is not a very good idea to wait passively for Phase Two to be completed, and then get out the acoustical measuring instruments, and then listen. It is now time to seek broader opinion about how best to serve the future of music at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre.

Kodak is known for getting things right—turning out great products, standing behind them and contributing to the Community. The Eastman School and the

66

University of Rochester get things right—turning out some fabulous graduates who contribute strongly to the future of music and other disciplines worldwide.

The acoustical (and potential multi-media) aspects of this forward-looking venture at Main and Gibbs are a bit of a stretch for both Kodak and Eastman—outside the pale of quotidian activity. However, that fact does not call for simply hiring experts and then remaining passive till the experts go away and the dust settles. Kodak and the U of R have sufficient resources and sufficient clout in the worlds of business, of finance, and of academia to ask difficult questions, to call upon further opinion, and to get things done right. Who will stand up and lead?

__________

The second major disappointment of that night at the band concert was that a humongous sound system was being used to amplify a live acoustical semi-classical event! It was a very good sound system, but I had not planned to listen to it. I already have a stereo at home for use on nights when live musicians do not stroll through the house.

No sound system has ever sounded as good as the real thing. Sound systems in theatres and concert halls are merely louder and more approximate than the real thing, no matter how many tens of thousands of dollars they have cost.

At the band concert, the microphoned, equalized and amplified sound was regurgitated through the eight principal strategically placed and well-aimed speakers at the front of the Theatre, producing sound levels throughout the hall equal to or greater than the levels of sound actually being produced onstage.

The sonic image forced upon the audience was like the result of superimposing eight lower quality photographic transparencies overtop of a finely etched original, each one staggered a tiny bit. Pinpoint definition of the locus of any instrument onstage was made impossible, as was audibility of the accurate original frequency curve.

Sometimes a flute or a triangle would suddenly appear out of the sky at the wrong side of the orchestra. The entire image floated in the air like a massive two-dimensional scrim between the musicians and the listener, mocking attempts to discern any fine details of what was really happening on stage.

67

Ironically the sound system also made it impossible to evaluate the house’s acoustic deficiencies, because it corrected them. By aiming the speakers carefully, the sound system achieved a very even painting of a homogeneous sound only tenuously related to real music, but with no acoustical shadows throughout the entire house. This sound was invariable and inescapable.

I had ventured downtown for an acoustic concert, only to be forced to listen to a huge stereo system. Water, water everywhere on the stage, and nary a drop to drink in the house. A massive two-dimensional picture of ‘water’ had been substituted by the sound system for the palpable refreshing wetness onstage.

What Authority presides over the relatively tin-eared utilization of this sound system? Who in the world approves such travesty upon acoustic music, on a concert-by-concert basis? Who has the autonomous right to presuppose how deafened and obtuse audiences have become in the year 2008?

Even worse, is this the future of classical orchestral music in recalcitrant halls, to which ranks the Eastman Theatre has been unfairly relegated, inappropriate Band-Aid upon inappropriate Band-Aid?

I am reminded of the current observation that doctors, in treating symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder while as yet lacking sufficient research to precisely identify the causes, have taken to prescribing drugs to ameliorate the side effects of other drugs, almost ad infinitum. Similarly at Eastman was prescribed a hopeful new shell, and then prescribed a glorious new sound system to ameliorate unexpected problems with the shell. From the IOA Acoustics Bulletin Jan/Feb 2005, yellow highlighting mine:

Paul Scarborough (Akustiks) followed with his secondpaper of the session, Acoustic enhancement at the HilbertCircle Theatre, co-authored with C N Blair (Akoustiks).

In 1986, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra renovatedthe Hilbert Circle Theatre as their new home. During thedesign process, acousticians realised that the shaping andlimited volume of the theatre’s audience chamber wouldnot produce the required acoustic, and they decided touse electro-acoustic enhancement. The ISO thus becameone of the first major US orchestras to employ suchtechnology in their regular concert venue.

68

By 1996, the original installation was showing its age [after only ten years?] and a new LARES acoustic enhancement system was installed.

Although this was a great success, it confirmed thatlong-standing problems with the architectural acousticdesign of the stage could not be corrected solely throughelectronic means. This resulted in the development ofa new orchestra enclosure in 2002. After completion ofthe new stage, the LARES system was retuned, resultingin what most* listeners report as a more natural, open,and reverberant sound than was present before.

Paul presented an overview of the enhancement system Design and a case history of the system tuning process thatoccurred in 2002 and 2003 during orchestra rehearsalsand concerts. ‘Before and after’ system settings werediscussed, along with the reasoning behind the changesimplemented. [* Boldface mine.]

Source: http://www.people.ex.ac.uk/jrwright/rs/rs20report.pdf

“Everything sounds biggerbetter [sic]." -Nuvo Newsweekly. Right.

The parallel plights of ISO at the Circle Theater in Indianapolis, Indiana and of the RPO at the Eastman Theatre are scary. Apparently, Akustiks designed a new shell in Indianapolis that still did not work because its obtuse wall angles still did not match the more greatly obtuse angles of the house walls (just as at Rochester). And so an electronic Band-Aid, a pre-existing Lares sound system, was slapped once again back upon the hall.

I wonder if the Eastman Theatre’s sound system is also a Lares? At the band concert it was certainly ‘correcting’ the results of our new shell’s poorly designed angles, and equalizing away some of the shrillness. But a better name than “Lares” would be ‘Low-res,’ for its lower resolution of sound than the real thing.

Please revisit Chapter 16a to hear once again the true acoustics of the shell-less Eastman Theatre in its glory days.

69

Below, the Circle Theatre in Indianapolis, with what looks like a bit of a Severance shell influence, but with wall angles possibly even more poorly matched than are Eastman’s:

Hilbert Circle Theatre, home of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Built 1916, reseated to 1781 seats in the mid-eighties. Note distinct reflex angle at intersection of shell and house.

Large reflex angles between shell and house, as at Eastman, create acoustical shadows.

70

What would have been the audience reaction at the band concert had suddenly the main circuit breaker for the sound system been turned off (a fantasy that crossed the mind of one audience member)? At least some people would have had an epiphany. “Speakers? What speakers?” asked an acquaintance I ran into at one point, implying, ‘Isn’t this just how music sounds?’

All of this adds up to a further measure of how seriously sonically lost we have become at the Eastman Theatre as of this present renovation upon renovation, with more renovation to come. Once again the promising words of A.J. Warner in 1924 [boldface mine]:

“The Eastman Theatre is an auditorium seating 3,568 people. Its acoustics are regarded as among its most notable features, for one can hear perfectly in any corner of the great structure, so carefully has it been designed.”

Beyond even just returning to these roots, a world class shell-less shoebox hall could be built within the current fan-shaped Eastman Theatre, with existing artwork moved from the present walls to the new walls. The exterior of the Eastman Theatre would remain intact. A shoebox hall would blow out of the water sonically all of the previous fixes proposed in this paper.

(Please refer to A Second Acoustically Relevant Letter from a Friend, below.)

I think it likely that the pragmatic dreamer George Eastman would approve something that would so accrue to the benefit of Rochester, enriching community life in so fundamental a way.

People would visit Rochester just to attend concerts in the hall. Eastman School faculty and student musicians, not to mention the RPO musicians, would be in heaven.

It is an embarrassment to the historically culturally rich City of Rochester that is does not have a truly excellent concert hall. Instead we have a multi-use theater that has become stretched acoustically past its previously refined limits in a contemporary quest for loudness.

71

Sketched in blue, the outline of a classic shoebox hall constructed entirely within the Eastman Theatre. The shoebox hall would be used principally for live acoustic rehearsals and concerts. There is no reason that it could not sound as powerfully luscious as do the shoebox halls in Boston, Vienna, Amsterdam and Nashville. Outer seat rows in the existing Theatre would be abandoned. Slightly non-parallel walls would be advantageous in terms of reducing standing waves. The present awful-sounding shell would be abandoned. The stage would remain in some form, but as a newly-integrated part of the hall. The Vienna Musikvereinsaal would fit tip to toe with about four feet to spare from balcony rear to stage rear! Existing Eastman seating utilized would be 2,044. No, this will never happen at the staid, unimaginative U of R. But throughout this paper are found simpler suggestions to greatly improve the sound, even after the dust has settled on the tone-deaf, hubristic 2004-2009 renovations.

A shoebox hall is something that Akustiks is good at. Witness the firm’s highly successful consulting on the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville, designed after the shoebox Musikvereinsaal in Vienna. Eastman’s own Akustiks consultant Christopher Blair was strongly involved in Nashville, as a consultant and even as a conductor. *

For a very thorough, broad-based and largely approving third-party review of the acoustics of Schermerhorn:http://championsofsound.blogspot.com/2007/06/hall-review-schermerhorn-symphony.html

Please see pictures of both halls on the following page.

72

Schermerhorn Concert Center, Nashville

Vienna Musikvereinsaal

73

Concerning Schermerhorn, there is an extensive interview with Christopher Blair and his Akustiks colleagues at http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2009 It is particularly notable to what highly appropriate extent the Nashville Symphony’s musicians were asked to be involved in the acoustics. There was even constructed a full-sized mock-up of the new, smaller stage design for Schermerhorn, and the orchestra was asked to get used to it for a year before Schermerhorn opened. Excerpts below (all highlighting mine):

“Russell Todd: Regarding the stage size issue, we wanted to replace conjecture with concrete facts. As a result, the orchestra's management built a full size mock-up of the new stage and used that during numerous rehearsals and even performances in the year before the building was completed.

This allowed the musicians to have a precise idea of what sitting on the new stage would feel like and help them adjust to the actual space even faster once it was completed

Drew McManus: Do you take the time to learn about any issues from individual players when going through this process?

Paul Scarbrough: There's no way avoid it, and that is a good thing. Musicians aren't shy about sharing their opinions in a direct way and this kind of feedback from the players helps us to fine tune the hall. The reality is that playing in an orchestra is like any other high performance position and they are always expected to be on and at their best. They know what works and what doesn't and what we learn from our discussions with musicians helps us to design better buildings.

Russell Todd: We even encourage this sort of feedback. During the tuning period, we asked conductors and players to go out into the hall to listen for the issues we were all talking about and pick up anything new. Ultimately that push-pull process allows us to fine tune the project and make it a success.

Christopher Blair: One aspect which had to wait until the new space was completed was how things would sound. Since getting into the new hall, the players have had to get used to a new way of hearing themselves in an environment where the balance of early and late energy cues is so radically different than what they had to work with at TPAC. In that room the early/late energy ratio was higher, aiding rhythmic precision, but at the expense of the musicians' ability to judge timbre, intonation, and balance. You simply can't judge acoustical balance on the basis of near-field sound propagation.

A calibrated return of late energy from the room back to the platform (avoiding a defined echo) is critical to support the players.”

74

Apparently for $120 million (total project cost) some time is set aside to actually converse with musicians, instead of ignoring of them as in Rochester.

But is judging acoustical balance the job of musicians or conductor?

Musicians need to first hear themselves and others onstage with the rhythmic precision obtained by clear early reflections. Only then does calibrated return of late energy (smoothly reflected echo) support the players.

In Rochester we have for four years lived with at least one too-delayed and too well-defined echo, a slapback, which Phase Two is supposed to fix with a new wall and a few box seats. This is not the place to repeat the caveats that appear elsewhere in this paper. Good luck, all.

___________________

Let’s make just one final, pivotal point. The Hilbert Circle Theatre in Indianapolis seats 1800, fewer than Severance Hall’s 2100, and within a size range reputedly very appropriate in the quest for the right balance of early and late reflections. Further, the Circle Theatre’s new shell emulates Cleveland’s shell, including something akin to ceiling pillows.

But the place sounds bad.

Why did the Circle Theatre still sound so bad after the lovely new shell was installed, that a sound system was required for classical concerts, just as Akustiks had warned would be the case? The sound system, like the Eastman Theatre’s, spreads a huge homogenous image, albeit a derived approximate image, equally throughout the house. This ‘solves’ the bad acoustics.

Both the Circle Theater and the Eastman Theatre were built for the showing of movies, specifically for the showing of silent films, before “talkies.” Sightlines to a projection screen at the front of the stage were paramount. Sound was secondary, even though Eastman lucked out by having the orchestra play at the front of the stage, more or less in the house, before a set with greatly angled walls and no ceiling. This may be the closest The Eastman Theatre ever came to a thrust stage. (See photo on p. 46.)

I do not know for certain that the once-weekly and later twice-weekly orchestra concerts retained this setup, but it seems likely that the well integrated, visually complementary set would have been be kept in place.

75

The answer to ‘why,’ in a word, is angles. In a fan shaped hall in which sightlines preclude the use of a thrust stage, the angles of the enclosure, or shell, must be designed to closely match the fan of the house wall angles. If they do not, to put it in the immortal words of a pragmatic musician friend, “You might as well go home and have a cheese sandwich.”

If Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre is to be retained intact (i.e. no shoebox inserted), as is pretty much a no-brainer in this conservative town, it is most pertinent to recognize that these angles must be made to match.

It is we of heightened levels of sonic satiation who have changed, not the Theatre itself, except for the sequential overlayment of new Band-Aids. It is the same Theatre in which once upon a time “…one [could] hear perfectly in any corner of the great structure, so carefully has it been designed.”

There is little accounting for the phenomenon of taste, including acoustical taste. All is cyclical, but on this swing of the good ship Pendulum the escapement has slipped a cog or two. At Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre we need a sober captain to effect repairs and guide us back to port. The hall has been pushed beyond its once long-admired genteel capabilities. Band-Aids are being applied over top of Band-Aids, when all we really need do is stop pushing! **

A committee will not do. A committee of yes-men is what got us into this mess. A leader is required. Where is the single strong leader at the University of Rochester who understands what has been going on? Such a leader would quickly gain followers previously mute for the sake of remaining politic.

Closing Summary and Challenge

The U of R and Kodak are being near-sighted and obtuse about the present day highest and best use of the old Eastman movie Theatre. They are focusing upon presenting a falsely projected loud and incoherent sound subordinate to physical glitz and glamour, a sound in part even caused by the rigid emphasis upon those attributes alone. Principal among such emphases is the acoustically poorly designed orchestra shell, which harms the sound both onstage and in the house, owing to its acoustically incorrect angles.

The current highest and best use of the Theatre would be that of sharing with

76

the Community the natural sound of acoustic orchestral and choral music. No conductor and orchestra can possibly extract from the mis-designed shell any semblance of natural sound. Alas, such natural orchestral sound from a professional orchestra is also largely unavailable elsewhere locally. As a result much of the Rochester public doesn’t even suspect it exists. The 2004 Theatre falls far short of apprising us of such lambent possibility, and the 2008 phase will not fundamentally alter the havoc wrought in 2004.

The public is beset on all sides by loud glitz. American Idol is a prime example. American Idol has its place, and can be great fun. But it is particularly abusive to the local Community that the Eastman Theatre’s sound since 2004 has been made to emulate such lowest common denominator electronically amplified music, betraying the single unique quality which all live acoustic music holds in common--its natural purity of sound.

Sadly, Management at the U of R and Kodak have chosen to compete head to head with just such a ubiquitous shallow substitute for pure acoustic music. The Eastman Theatre could and should instead offer to audiences a touchstone of purity and coherence—an experience they will find in few other settings locally; and thus an experience of beauty which few even suspect exists.

If Kodak and the U of R will open their minds and ears beyond hubristic self-aggrandizement expressed as glitz, glamour, and distorted loud sound, the Community will be grateful. Somehow Management has forgotten (or else they never understood) that one goes to a concert in order to listen to the music.

If Kodak and the U of R will not open their minds and ears, then we’ll be right back here once again in twenty or thirty years, just as we are now three decades after the last unfortunate louder/brighter travesty of 1972. At the time that change was highly touted and strongly embraced.

Such is the standard public posture commonly taken about the results, good or bad, of massive amounts of spent institutional money. It took three decades, and the passage of the principals involved, to finally allow expression of dissatisfaction over the 1972 changes. How sad that things are now even

77

much worse, but the game is still being played according to the same tired rules of isolated hubris.

Please solicit broad input from the musicians and from all conductors involved with ensembles on the Eastman Theatre stage. There is much to be learned from these longsuffering, highly qualified people, who are afraid for political and academic reasons to speak out.

So often Power lacks sensitivity. Authority is more often built upon sensitivity. In the present case that sensitivity is musical, and that Authority resides in the pragmatism of local conductors and musicians—more so even than within acoustical theory. If Power places all its acoustical eggs into one outsourced basket, and refuses to broadly consult the local pragmatic Authority which perforce must deal with the results, then the potential for havoc is rife. That's exactly what we've got here.

Why have such interviews not been undertaken in Rochester by the consulting firm Akustiks, as they did so thoroughly at Cleveland and Nashville? Somebody at the U of R must have told them not to. Whoever that is should be ashamed, but probably isn’t. Ah, hubris.

Who will step up, and through dispassionate, clear-headed investigation, negotiation and leadership salvage the single unique feature of live acoustic classical music—a feature many do not even suspect because they lack opportunity to hear it—its immaculately engaging warm, clear, unhampered sound?

We need that person now.

_______________________________________* “Tuning sessions” were held after completion, with Christopher Blair conducting.** Good lord, sheer metaphor madness. At least it’s near the end.

FINIS

78

An Acoustically Relevant Letter from a Friend:

Bob,

When you have a shell with side walls extending toward the house that are angled obtusely relative to the rear of the shell, and that connect to more greatly obtuse house walls, sound will reflect close into the house from the first leg of the angles (the shell walls), and farther out into the house from the second leg (the house walls). This leaves in-between areas, or swaths, in the house that get no reflected sound at all.  For that reason, inwardly pointing angles (reflex angles) are very, very bad in a concert hall design. 

That was what I was getting at when I said the walls of the shell and hall should be one and the same.  The Eastman Theatre not only has such angles right and left of the shell, but also at the upper side of the opening.  Reflections from both walls and ceiling of the shell will reflect only to the nearest part of the audience.  Reflections from the walls and ceiling of the hall will reach only the farthest part of the audience.  In between is a wasteland.  And of course, the two large fractions of the total sound have different lumped delays.  I could describe it thoroughly for you in person, while drawing with a pencil, so that you understand how far reaching the effect is.

Nothing else in the hall could be as damaging as those angles. Surfaces, Zenitherm, resonances, etc are all minor trivialities by comparison.  Some of the finest halls have no sound-absorbent materials besides seats, carpet runners, and audience, and everything is made of solid rock, concrete, or brick, and hardwood.  Intentional resonators are like including coat hanger wire in the design of a car's exhaust system.  When there is nothing to fix, you don't need to fix it.

That the shell is small is not so much the problem, it is that the angles of the walls and ceiling are less than the angles of the walls of the hall that is the problem.  I believe this is the most serious problem, and is exactly what distinguishes the sound from the old days before 1972 that you remember, when there were only theater angles and no shell angles at all.  One reflected mass of sound (from house walls and ceiling), only, although less sound overall. 

There should be no need ever to absorb or lose any sound (in a good design), which is why Walter Hendl removed some curtains for Pictures, and why

79

Mercury removed even more for recording.  Sound absorption just wastes the cost of musicians and good violins.

I would say in order to keep the stage, retain current overall loudness, but "put the sound back together in one piece," the front of the shell should be widened if possible (there may be structural steel down both sides behind that gold rim), and the rear should be narrowed to bring the shell wall to exactly the same angle as the hall wall.  The shell wall can even be moved to be exactly in line with the hall wall (leaving the rim should not be a serious block).  Then open the top of the shell the same way, all the way to the ceiling of the hall if possible, and if not possible, at least make it as long and steep as possible (or even a concave curve from floor to hall ceiling) so that reflections from it reach all parts of the hall instead of just the front of the hall as it is now.

This design, with the shell walls in line with hall walls, results in the rear of the shell being about the same width as the previous 1972 shell.  No loss of stage floor space.  The geometry of the old shell walls made more sense than the new ones.

When the shell effectively disappears because of the adjustment of its angles, or when it actually disappears when changing to a thrust stage, or a combination of both, then you will have a more natural sound again.

A simple experiment to perform is this:  It appears that the ceiling of the shell can presently be tilted, so just tilt it to the max, and remove all of the visible curtains at the top of the opening.  I am especially interested to know the effect on how players hear themselves.  And of course I would like to be in the audience.  I suspect that it would be an improvement.

Bill Bailer

[ William Bailer,  bbailer@frontiernet.net ]

A Second Acoustically Relevant Letter from a Friend:

Bob,

I had an insight.

80

All of the thinking about Eastman Theatre renovations is backwards.   Backwards in the sense that it is looking historically backward. The Eastman Theatre is no longer the movie house it was principally meant to be, its fan shape providing good sightlines from every seat to a screen at the center of the stage.

The Eastman Theatre is not a temple, not a church, and not George Eastman's mausoleum.  There is nothing sacred about it.  So what we should be thinking about is:  what is the best concert hall that can be built within the space now occupied by the Eastman Theatre?

Number 1:   The whole idea of a recessed stage or orchestra pit is obsolete.  Not only is it obsolete for concert halls, but the new Renaissance Square Theater is going to be built to especially accommodate theater, which means opera also.  Thus it appears that the Eastman Theatre will by default be only a concert hall. 

Number 2:  Build new walls within the existing Theatre, to turn it into an actual concert hall, which it is not now, never was, and will not become during Phase Two as planned. The new side walls would be nearly parallel, eliminating the side seating outside the blue lines as drawn, but leaving existing seats exactly as they are, without the need to install new seating. The Vienna Musikvereinsaal would fit longitudinally inside the Eastman Theatre with ten feet to spare. The acoustics would finally be corrected, dramatically. 

[See full-sized drawing, p.65].  

The fan shape must go.  Absolutely must go, if we are to have the sound of a real concert hall. After investigating over a hundred concert halls, it is evident that all the fan-shaped halls were originally movie theaters. In every case each is currently considered acoustically poor for music, just as in the case of the Circle Theater in Indianapolis. The fan itself, specifically the reflex angles it creates at the intersection with the stage walls, is the culprit.

If there is structural steel around the present stage that must be retained, just paint it and leave it.  It will not block any lines of sight with a narrowed hall, and will have no significant acoustical effect.

How structurally sound is the roof of this old movie house theater?  Safety is

81

paramount. All other theaters of similar construction in the area have been demolished. Is the Eastman Theatre structurally sound enough to last for another 100 years? We need an engineer's report on that.  Maybe it was built by George Eastman to last for centuries, but if it is not going to last more than another 100 years, we need to reconsider everything.

Looking at the floor plan of the Theatre, cutting the hall off at the outer aisles works perfectly.  It appears that the balcony aisles are a little farther out than the orchestra aisles, so the orchestra side aisles can just be made a little wider, which makes sense anyway since they are right in front of the entry doors.  It all works very well, leaving the remaining current seating completely intact, to whatever extent desired.  Most of the current ceiling, and of course the chandelier, could be retained as well. 

Bill Bailer [ William Bailer,  bbailer@frontiernet.net ]

Original Essay, January 2006, edited May 18, 2008: [The clarinetist’s remarks about musicians hearing each other better in the new shell have been since rendered passé by further investigation, which has shown that the sound within the shell is louder but more jumbled. However in the case of a relatively small woodwind ensemble set well forward on the stage, his observation might still apply.]

 http://sirhute.com/eastman-theatre-acoustics-original-essay-january-2006.htm

Correspondence with Third-Party Acoustician, December 2007: [Input from a well-regarded Ph.D. physicist-acoustician who knows both Christopher Blair of Akustiks and Leo Beranek.] http://sirhute.com/eastman-theatre-correspondence-with-3rd-party-acoustician.htm

Letter to City Newspaper, December 2005: [The same caveat as above applies about the clarinetist’s remarks.]

http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/archives/2005/12/Reader+feedback+-+12+28+05

82

Bob LairdSodus NY

boblaird@rochester.rr.com315-483-0523

"Hindsight is an exact science.”

83