It is not quite music in the round, but the Kennedy Center has found a way to bring classical music closer to the audience: It will sell 63 seats behind the National Symphony Orchestra in its newly refurbished concert hall, in addition to the usual nearly 2,500 in front of the orchestra.
They will be the best seats in the house - and the cheapest, at as little as $15 - says Lawrence J. Wilker, president of the Kennedy Center."It's kind of an innovation," Wilker said.
But those "chorister seats" behind the orchestra will not be available for the first public performance in the concert hall, scheduled Friday night.
Instead, the space will be needed for a chorus to sing spirituals and a favorite Mozart choral piece: "Jubilate, exultate!" (Rejoice, exult!)
When the seats are available, listeners sitting in them will hear an especially intense quality of sound, as if they were in the midst of the more than 100 musicians, Wilker said.
Overall as part of the refurbishment, sound for the audience should be improved by a new "canopy" above the stage. It is made of 25 two-inch slabs veneered with cherry wood, each adjustable to the musicians beneath and to the style of the music and designed to reflect the music out to the audience.
The refit, the first since the center was built in 1971, cost $14 million and took 220 workers 10 months to complete, during which the concert hall was closed.
The cost of the "acoustical cloud" was not covered under the congressional appropriations for the refurbishment and was paid by a private grant of about $1 million.
Over the years, complaints about the hall's sound quality had piled up:
- The musicians could not hear themselves properly, which made it hard to follow the conductor and attack their parts on cue.
- The music did not have the "live" sound of the best halls.
- The lower notes of the strings did not give a "warm" enough sound.
- The loud brasses did not balance right against the quiet strings.
- Echoes from the rear wall made the sound muddy.
Engineer Christopher Jaffe found room for lots of improvements.
Air chambers were installed behind the on-stage boxes. Jaffe raised the wooden floor of the stage about 30 inches from the concrete slab underneath. American cherry was generously used on paneling behind the orchestra and on more panels on the outside of the balconies.
New upholstery, absorbing less sound, was installed on the seats - now a dusty rose more soothing to the eye, at least, than the previous bright red. Also, the metal underneath them was replaced with wood.
After the first rehearsal, orchestra director Leonard Slatkin sent Wilker a one-word memo:
"Yes!!!!"