Acoustical Treatments For SoundBox, Part Two

Photo by Stefan Cohen.

This is a continuation from Part One, where we learn San Francisco Symphony’s music director, Michael Tilson Thomas, suggested using a rehearsal hall beneath and behind its Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall as a performance space. He envisioned a new, experimental performance venue where late-night small group concerts of eclectic mixes of music could be offered to “culturally adventurous listeners” in a nightclub-like setting. The hall, formerly known as Zellerbach Rehearsal Hall A, became SoundBox once Meyer Sound senior acoustic engineer Pierre Germain installed a Constellation system in the space.

Germain says that his team began the Zellerbach A project by starting from the plans for the very first Constellation installation, one that was for another hall that shared the name, the University of California, Berkeley’s 2,005-seat Zellerbach Hall, home of the Cal Performance series that hosts everything from symphonies to solo acts. “We treated this like a giant orchestra stage using Zellerbach Hall as a starting point since the layout of the space was up in the air through most of the planning,” he says, adding that it only came together at the last minute, “so we didn’t really know where the performing platforms might end up or how the seating would be arrayed.”

Optimum placement was determined for 28 suspended microphones, with four zones that enabled the performance stage to be placed along any wall or multiple stages to be used simultaneously. Once Germain and his team had finished designing the system, it was installed by BBI Engineering, Inc. of San Francisco and calibrated by Dr. Roger Schwenke, Meyer’s senior scientist, and Melody Parker, associate acoustic engineer. Then Constellation project director John Pellowe came in for the final tuning of the multiple settings to match the particulars of the room. Pellowe, a Grammy Award-winning engineer who had been the sound engineering director for Luciano Pavarotti and The Three Tenors for many years, is what Germain calls “our golden ears.” Coincidentally, he had also done the final tuning for the Constellation system at Miami’s SoundScape, where Tilson Thomas first experienced its capabilities.

Photo by Stefan Cohen.

Of course, Zellerbach A’s dead acoustics were not the only issues involved in creating SoundBox. The space had never been designed for public events in the first place, and it was constructed a decade before the passage of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the setting of specific accessibility requirements. A ramp leading from the street level entrance to the elevated stage area had to be constructed, new ADA-compliant restrooms added, and a great deal of improvement had to be made to the HVAC system. San Francisco Symphony director of operations Andrew Dubowski said the old heating system was so poor that he “literally had to call building operations a week before a rehearsal and ask them to start warming the room up.”

The effort to improve the acoustics of Zellerbach A is not the first time the San Francisco Symphony has had to tackle the sound quality of a space. A decade after its 1980 opening, its main performance space in Davies Hall itself underwent a multi-million dollar aural and structural renovation under the guidance of acoustician R. Lawrence Kirkegaard and renovation architect David Larson. Its interior volume was reduced by nearly 5%, while center aisles were added to the main floor, walls reshaped in fiberglass backed by sand-filled tubes, and the orchestra playing space given risers and a back and side shell with resonating diffusers. Most importantly, an array of 6'-square moveable Plexiglas panels was suspended overhead.

Dubowski points out that the Davies Hall project had constituted a structural fix that “would have been way too expensive for what became SoundBox. We explored adding a shell and other architectural improvements, but we hit on using Meyer’s Constellation, which MTT [Michael Tilson Thomas] had experience with in Florida.” Eventually, they went with a virtual fix, using Constellation’s digital technology.

The result? “We’re having a blast,” Dubowski says, adding that the system has more than exceeded expectations. “I think everyone who had doubts when we first opted for an audio-based acoustic fix has come around.”

Visual Systems

Photo by Stefan Cohen.

In addition to the Meyer team, theatre consulting firm Auerbach Pollock Friedlander worked on plans covering room configuration and seating as well as overhead rigging, lighting, and projection systems design. Individual concerts this season feature lighting designs by different noted designers. Luke Kritzek, the director of lighting at the New World Symphony, handled some of the early concerts while three-time Emmy Award winner and lighting director of Olympic Opening Ceremonies and Super Bowl Halftime Shows, Travis Hagenbuch, handled the later ones.

The Symphony wanted to have full-motion projection available on what turned out to be three rear-projection screens: a huge 23'x40' screen and smaller 6'2"x18' screen from AV Stumpfl, and a 13'x7'6" screen from Screenworks. These screens display moving images through one Barco and three Panasonic projectors controlled by a Dataton Watchout v.5 multi-display software suite.

Adam Larsen, frequent video design contributor to the San Francisco Symphony—he devised the projections for the performance of Debussy’s Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien, which Live Design profiled in 2012— developed the specifications for the video and has been engaged to create content for all of the SoundBox concerts this season. In addition, he devised the opening footage that kicks off each concert, a montage of clapping hands set to the composition “Clapping Music” by Steve Reich, one of the modern composers often featured by Tilson Thomas in concerts upstairs in Davies Hall.

Photo by Stefan Cohen.

SoundBox concerts will only utilize the space for ten evenings this season, but the addition of the Constellation system is expected to make a real difference for the use of the space as a rehearsal hall as well. The San Francisco Opera hasn’t yet rehearsed in the hall with the Constellation system installed, as the current season’s fall offerings ran through last December, and the summer program doesn’t kick off until June. The San Francisco Ballet, on the other hand, has used the space with the new Constellation system.

Martin West, the Ballet’s music director and principal conductor, who says he’s “always lamented the fact that the room was essentially dead,” reports that they have had one rehearsal using Constellation and “it totally transforms the sound space.” He adds that, while the system is not yet set up with presets for an orchestra of his size, “we will be hoping to fine tune the settings so that we can match it more closely to the acoustics that we experience in the opera house.”

But for now, whether for rehearsals or for performances for as many as 500 audience members, SoundBox sounds great.

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