40th Anniversary Celebration?!

 

Davies Symphony Hall, SF

Photo by me

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall is turning 40, and San Francisco Symphony sent out an email celebrating it, which, honestly, has my head on the table. I'm really not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Davies is....not a great hall. There've been one or two renovations trying to fix its acoustical problems; get a big orchestra on stage, which happens a lot, and the sound gets pretty congested. There's no restaurant and the refreshments aren't too varied. It sits on a half-story plinth, meaning that at street level, it presents an unfriendly blank face to the world. This photo shows the problem:

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall

Uncredited photo received in patron email from SFS

The ticketing area is small and crowded and has an amazingly low ceiling; it has always felt rather mean to me. The staircase to the main lobby is too damn small; there are two sets of elevators and they don't feel like enough. 

The email floats the local joke about Lake Louise, the basement-level parking lot used by the musicians, music director, and various administrative folks, as follows:

The sunken parking lot on Franklin Street was originally planned to be a recital hall. The space is now affectionately known by Symphony musicians and staff as “Lake Louise” due to its propensity for flooding. 

This is not good publicity. The question you want answered is: why was the recital hall never built? I assume it's got something to do with money; once the hall was built, funds didn't exist or couldn't be raised for a recital hall, or it was decided that Herbst Theater, which is on the other side of the Opera House, was sufficient. I'll note that San Francisco Performances uses Herbst, St. Mark's Lutheran, and occasionally, I think, SF Jazz, so maybe, just maybe, there is sufficient demand for a recital hall in addition to Herbst.

I've also gotta note that our incoming music director used to conduct home concerts at one of the world's great concert halls, acoustically and architecturally, a hall that was built during his tenure as music director of the LA Phil. Please, Mr. Salonen, can you get a Gehry/Toyota concert hall built here?

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Los Angeles, CA

Photo by me

Previously: Real Estate Matters, or, A Tale of Two Concert Halls

Real Estate Matters, or, A Tale of Two Concert Halls

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Every time I'm in Davies Symphony Hall, I'm reminded of its inadequacies, both those I personally experience and those I've only read about.

• The tiny, ugly, low-ceilinged entry area, which is shared with the box office. You feel like you're walking into a BART station, not a concert hall. It's a mean little space with no sense of grandeur.
• The confusing layout. Ever tried to find your way to the terrace seating?
• The blank corner of Grove & Van Ness.
• The inadequate bathrooms. Lines out the door of the women's, especially.
• The small elevators, which are heavily used and will be more so as the baby boomers age.
• The uncomfortable seats, which aren't all the same size, many of which are too damn small.
• The small and mediocre gift shop, which has hardly any CDs or books about music.
• The parking lot occupying space that could be used for musical or administrative purposes.
• The lack of a restaurant (and even a decent assortment of sandwiches). (Even the 80+ year old opera house has a restaurant!)
• The inadequate space for administrative offices.
• The godawful amplification system they use, when they (usually wrongly) amplify something
• And worst of all, the still-mediocre acoustics, despite renovations.

Honestly, it's time to find a rich donor, tear it down, and start over.

And every time I'm at the War Memorial Opera House, I'm reminded of its inadequacies.

• The really awful seats: in the orchestra, they're big enough, but about two inches off the ground, making them tough to get in and out of if you are old enough to have the money to pay for orchestra seats. In the upper reaches, the seats get tinier and tinier and the leg room gets worse and worse. [New since 2014: the seat replacement project will make a huge difference here.]
• The tiny press room, which always overflows at a primo
• The lack of adequate rehearsal space. Did you know that there's a big rehearsal space in Davies that is used by the opera?
• The lack of adequate storage space for sets and other stuff. When three operas are going, it's common to see parts of sets stored outside on Grove near Franklin.
• The inadequate theatrical systems. Even with the many upgrades when the renovations were done following the earthquake, the systems could use more upgrades.
• The size of the pit. Even after being enlarged in the 90s, there wasn't room for the full St. Francois orchestra, and forget about using the full complement called for by the Frau and Elektra orchestras.
• No alternative performance space, a problem that's being solved with the renovation of the Veterans Building, which will include a small theater.
• I'm just assuming that the backstage facilities such as dressing rooms could be improved.
• The administrative offices are...a little jammed.
• [Added in 2020] The uncertain, uneven acoustics and many dead spots.

At least the opera house sounds good, has a restaurant, and has public spaces that have some sense of grandeur, well, at least until you get up to balcony level. And the 90s renovations provided more or less adequate bathrooms as well.

So, given all of this....I have a plan. 

If you tore down both buildings - hold on, I know you love the opera house, but think about the issues - and used the plots occupied by both, plus Grove Street, you could build one hell of an adequate multi-use facility. You'd have to route Grove under the house, but it could be done, and of course there could be more parking (especially for disabled people) on site.

Just think of it: Lake Louise could be built over and the new building could be an extra couple of stories high, to accommodate more and better rehearsal, administrative, and function space. The opera house could be more physically comfortable and the concert hall could, uh, sound good. Of course you'd hire Yasuhisa Toyota to design the acoustics of all of the performing spaces.  (He designed Disney and Bing Halls, a superb track record more or less locally.) There could be a couple of smaller / alternative performance spaces. David Herbert would stop complaining about inadequate timpani practice space. You'd be able to sit down for a nice dinner before a concert. You could use the rest rooms without risking missing the Act II curtain. The opera's administrative offices could have a few more windows.

Maybe the Ballet could have its own performance space, so that the Opera could go year-round, but I don't think that there would be enough room for this unless we also take down the Veterans Building. (Well, that's a thought!)

Staging this plan would be tough and expensive: for the Davies demolition phase, SFS would have to go back to performing in the opera house, and they'd have to rent space elsewhere for the administrative offices. When the Opera House came down, everybody would have to find performance and administrative alternatives. (We know bad things happen when a company just stops performing for a year.) Moreover, construction would not be fast; it would take a couple of years to construct and furnish the building. It would take a lot of money ($500 million to $750 million, is my guess.) 

Years of run-outs? Oy. Maybe not. But I can dream.