http://sirhute.com/eastman-acoustics.htm

Edited September 07, 2008

Eastman Theatre Acoustics 2008/2009: Stirring the Soup

A respected Eastman School faculty member has told me privately, "The [2004 "Phase One"] changes to Eastman Theater have had awful results."

The same individual has said also, "The renovation to Eastman Theater has made it worse, and I can't imagine that Phase Two will improve anything."

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The fact that I am not at liberty to ascribe these and other such remarks from various performing musicians underscores the silent fortitude with which Eastman School and RPO musicians are dealing as best they can with the results of tone-deaf hubris at the highest levels of the U of R and Kodak. Of themselves, altered architecture and increased loudness do not automatically serve the purity of the music.

In fact at the Kodak/Eastman Theatre, since 2004 (and even earlier, after the 1972 alterations) the purity of acoustic orchestral sound onstage and in the house has suffered greatly. Since 2004 the performing musicians' efforts to maintain good ensemble onstage have been greatly frustrated by the lack of acoustical clarity within the new, improperly-designed shell.

It is atypical of the acoustical consulting firm Akustiks to have not included performing musicians in periods of discovery before Phase One in 2004, and before Phase Two in 2008/2009. Akustiks crows about their having involved the local performing musicians at the projects in Cleveland and Nashville. Why not in Rochester?

For in-depth reporting of acoustical complaints from musicians and audience members alike, please see Chapter 5 ("Some Informal Interviews") of Stirring the Soup at http://sirhute.com/eastman-theatre-acoustics-may-2008-stirring-the-soup.doc [or .htm]. Elsewhere, the paper contains clear proposals for substantially improving the sound of the Eastman Theatre, thereby inevitably attracting greater patronage, even after hubris has its way and all the juggernaut-dust of 2004 – 2009 has settled.

Presently at the Eastman Theatre more is less, and it is difficult or even impossible to listen intently into the music being played. This is so both for the musicians and for the audiences for whom they play. It is a little like singing in the shower. The sound is nice and loud, but the details are rather indeterminate and often quite harsh.

Are we stuck with this situation, or can someone get the ears of the top management at the U of R and Kodak? Do they have ears?

Bob Laird
315-483-0523 Sodus landline
585-738-2320 Verizon cell
boblaird@rochester.rr.com

For a concise bare-bones outline of the Eastman Theatre’s present and ongoing acoustical problems: http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/news/letters/EASTMAN+THEATRE%3A+Renovations+won+t+fix+the+acoustics/

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Excerpt from Stirring the Soup:

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 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 the Community the natural sound of acoustic orchestral and choral music. No conductor and orchestra can possibly extract from the poorly designed shell any semblance of natural sound. Such natural orchestral sound from a professional orchestra is largely unavailable elsewhere locally. As a result, much of the Rochester public doesn’t suspect that such beauty is even possible. The 2004 Theatre falls far short of apprising us of such lambent possibility, and the 2008/2009 phase will not fundamentally alter the acoustical 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 the show can be great fun in a loud and glitzy manner. But it is particularly abusive to the local Community that the Eastman Theatre’s sound has been made since 2004 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 has chosen to compete head to head with such ubiquitous shallow simulacrums of pure acoustic music. Instead, the Eastman Theatre could and should offer to audiences a touchstone of purity and coherence—an experience they will find in few other settings locally, and therefore 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, ultimately 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 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 reticent 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 than it does within misapplied 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.

Commonly musicians and musical administrators believe that acoustical matters are arcane and must be left to ‘experts.’ This is not entirely so. Acousticians operate in a world of theory which is often largely correct in the real world, but which gets fuzzy amidst complex variables or if unrecognized attributes have not been plugged in to their equations, or if a customer’s physical demands are allowed to trump requirements for achievement of the best possible sound.

Musicians operate in a world of pragmatic necessity. Theirs may not be to know why, but theirs is to make the very best of any acoustic in which they must work. Every musician hears a bit differently, but there is usually consensus about to what extent an acoustic facilitates or impedes ensemble. Since 2004 the verdict of Eastman and RPO musicians ranges from pragmatic neutrality to strong negativity concerning that matter.

Why have interviews with performing musicians 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.

– Stirring the Soup, p. 74.

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