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SHOWCASE:
The Stars Will Shine On Disney's Debut
With the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, L.A. gets another dose of glamour and glitz.

By Heidi Schwartz

When people think of Los Angeles, what immediately comes to mind is the hype and hoopla of the entertainment industry. But in reality, the emperor had no clothes-or at least, he was bulging at the seams of an outdated outfit shared by several demanding masters. In spite of being one of the three largest performing arts centers in the nation, the Music Center struggled to serve the various cultural troupes that used the facilities on a regular basis.

Located in downtown Los Angeles, the Music Center is home to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Ahmanson Theater, and the Mark Taper Forum. Each year, the Center welcomes more than 1.3 million people to performances by its four resident companies: the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Center Theatre Group, the Los Angeles Opera, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. In addition, the Center hosts visiting performing arts groups and provides arts education for more than one million students and teachers in the surrounding area. Unfortunately, at a maximum capacity just under 6,000 seats, the existing venues were simply not substantial enough to meet the demands of this entertainment Mecca.

Howard Sherman, vice president of operations for the Music Center, explains, "The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion has been home to the Philharmonic, the Opera, and the Master Chorale since the early 1960s. As the companies have grown, this building has just been overtaxed to the point where we couldn't even afford to make time to do maintenance. It's very expensive to have sequential crews to do matinees at the Philharmonic and evening performances at the Opera."

No Room At The Pavilion

As the second largest city in the country, L.A. desperately needed a home for its world famous philharmonic orchestra. "So the decision was made, through the generosity of the Disney family, to build a concert hall as the fourth theater of the music center," says Sherman.

The new facility's primary tenants will be the Philharmonic and the Master Chorale, leaving the Chandler Pavilion for the growing demands of the Opera. "They're currently just under 70 performances a year, and they're doing eight productions. They'd like to double that over the next five years," he explains.

"This also opens the Pavilion up for dance, community programming, and other pop events. For years, if anyone called the Pavilion to book it, the answer would be, 'I'm sorry. We have no time available,'" Sherman adds.

15 Years And 2,265 Seats Later

Concepts for the Walt Disney Concert Hall were initially proposed back in 1987, after Disney's widow Lillian presented planners with a $50 million gift. But it took more than 15 years (along with an additional $224 million) for the project to come to fruition. And as a county facility, the project was hampered by bureaucratic wranglings that at one point brought everything to a screeching halt in 1994.

After acquiring additional funds from numerous sources (including the Disney family), the project was back on track in 1997. And on the heels of his unabashed success with the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum near Barcelona (which was designed after the Disney Center, but opened in 1997), Frank Gehry's now famous architectural firm was given the go ahead to proceed.

As an adopted son of Los Angeles (he was born in Toronto but moved to L.A. with his family when he was 18), Gehry has a special affinity for the Walt Disney Concert Hall: it is the first large project his firm has done for the city he has called home since 1947. And with its spectacular curves and sparkling stainless steel facades, the building is living up to the expectations of everyone.

"The outside of the building was designed to reflect the aesthetic of the inside, which in itself evolved according to the highest acoustical standards," Gehry says. "The outside was designed to reflect and respond to its surroundings and to serve as a gathering place."

Security And Acoustics

But as a gathering place, the facility-with its numerous entrances, parks, pedestrian areas, restaurants, and more-has presented particular challenges for Sherman's team, which includes more than 315 full- and part-time reports. He observes, "Our whole focus is trying to facilitate the vision of the architects and the tenants. How do we make it live? Frank Gehry calls it 'the living room for the city,' but for us that translates into access points all over a building that is combination park/museum/mall-a major tourist destination. Running this is made more complex by the fact that it's a huge concert hall that requires rehearsals and performances."

The main entrance features sweeping expanses of glass, a grand stairway, an oval courtyard, and several atria spaces. The hall encompasses two outdoor amphitheaters, including a children's amphitheater that seats up to 300 visitors and a second performing space that accommodates an audience of 120. A large portion of the site is dedicated to an urban public park with an expansive garden and ornamental landscaping.

Conceived of many years before the attacks on 9/11, the plans for the space needed to be revised after the attacks. Determined to sustain the open sense of the original plan, Sherman notes, "that additional systems and staffing have been put in place to secure the building. In fact," he adds, "the bigger challenge has been connecting to existing systems in the other three venues. By themselves the systems operate just fine, but we had to work hard to get them to talk to each other."

The marriage of aesthetics and acoustics was another challenge for the project management team. The centerpiece of the hall, the main auditorium, is the result of a collaboration between Frank Gehry Partners and Nagata Acoustics, with additional consultation provided by the Philharmonic's conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen. Paneled in Douglas fir, the curved interior design of the hall retains the acoustical characteristics and intimacy of a traditional "shoebox" theater. And the groundbreaking "vineyard" layout adds to the acoustic by compartmentalizing the sound.

"The term 'vineyard' comes from Berlin's Philharmonie, which opened in 1963. The acousticians in Berlin wanted to make some smaller walls in the audience area, so they divided it into blocks, like steps or terraces in a vineyard," says acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota. "Before Walt Disney Concert Hall, we were very successful with Suntory Hall in Tokyo. In that hall, the basic room shape-the perimeter-was almost square, like a box. It was very easy for us to understand the acoustical behavior inside the box, so we combined the box style for the perimeter of the Hall with the vineyard layout."

With such a large space, even the seats play an important part in the acoustical design. Toyota explains, "Since we have 2,265 seats, they must be influential to the total acoustic of the hall. When the audience is in the seats, they and their clothes absorb sound. But when the audience is not there, it still has to work, because the orchestra has to rehearse during the empty situation."

Members of the audience will surround the orchestra platform for a personal experience, and a pipe organ (dubbed "the French fries" by Gehry, its form designer) will occupy a central position between the seating sections at the rear of the stage. The organ is scheduled to debut one year after the opening of the building.

More Than Just A Pretty Face

Scheduled to open on October 23, 2003, the Concert Hall will be viewed by some as the crown jewel in the redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles. As part of the city's Grand Avenue Pedestrian Improvement Project, the hall occupies a 3.6 acre site-a full city block at the intersection of First Street and Grand Avenue in the historic Bunker Hill area of downtown Los Angeles-within the 11 acre Music Center complex.

"The opening of the landmark Walt Disney Concert Hall, together with the extensive improvements made to enhance the accessibility of Grand Avenue and the Music Center Plaza, mark the completion of a major phase of downtown revitalization that has also included the construction of Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the Colburn School of Performing Arts, and the Staples Center, as well as the renovation of the Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Los Angeles Public Library," says Steven D. Rountree, president and chief operating officer of the Music Center.

The building's orientation, combined with the curvature of the exterior walls, presents highly sculptural compositions that wrap the entire building and provide multiple facades to the surrounding neighborhood. Matt Tyrnauer explains, "On Disney Hall's east side, which faces the Music Center, polite homage is paid to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Gehry has aligned one of the high curving steel walls of the new building with the east wall of the Chandler, arranging it so that the theaters engage each other with a friendly wave across First Street." ("Roll Over Bilbao," Vanity Fair, September 2003, pages 460-469.)

The Newest Celeb

Now that the scaffolding has come down and the tarps have been removed, pre-opening festivities have caused quite a sensation in a city known for its celebrity sightings. In the case of the Concert Hall, the tables have actually been turned: the site is acting as the celebrity, not the other way around.

The hall held its first event last month; Gehry used the stage as the setting for a dinner that recognized some of those who served as fundraisers for the project. Sherman recalls, "There was a heightened sense of energy in this facility with the first ushers in the building; security was dealing with the first members of the public in the building." One minor glitch added to the excitement at 7:30 p.m., when "building services had to figure out how to override the timer, because the lobby lights went out-that system hadn't been commissioned yet, and our staff hadn't been trained. Fortunately, it was summer and there was enough ambient light. We figured it out eventually."

Since the official opening is just around the corner, unscheduled events are bound to happen. Sherman is prepared, although he anticipates "a roller coaster ride" throughout the first year. "This is probably the trickiest time. All the planning in the world won't prevent the building from having a life of its own-no matter what we anticipate. Then we have to react and morph our plans to make sure everything works in an efficient, effective way."

With more than 17 years at the Music Center (and five years on the Concert Hall), Sherman acknowledges the complexities of handling such an important assignment. He says, "There is naturally fear of the unknown, but the overriding feeling is one of excitement. It's a huge challenge, but now we're ready for liftoff."

Calling the members of the operations team "incredibly dedicated," Sherman stresses how everyone "feels honored to be living through this experience, because of what this building is and what it will be. We all know how lucky we are to be part of an operations team that was able to make this work. No one person does it all."

Yet, without someone able to "delegate when feasible and be a control freak when necessary," Sherman modestly underestimates his role in a project that has been the source of many headaches. He says, "I don't do much; I just push paper and make sure everybody gets what they need." Sounding much like Hollywood legend Spencer Tracy-who once explained his acting technique by saying, "Just know your lines and don't bump into the furniture"-Sherman has a refreshing sense of humility for a man preparing to open and operate one of the country's most significant buildings.

What will happen on that stellar night in October? More than likely, events will take place without a hitch. Nevertheless, this much is certain: the show will go on!