Woolsey Hall on Yale's Campus, New Haven, CT
I went to two concerts over the weekend; Friday night was the Yale Jazz Ensemble and Yale Concert Band's tribute to Cole Porter and Glenn Miller and Sunday afternoon was the Hartford Symphony's third subscription concert of the season. The two experiences could hardly have been more different.
The Glenn Miller part of Friday night's concert is something that Director Tom Duffy has done several times before, and done brilliantly. He recreates an original Glenn Miller radio broadcast from 1944, from the same space that Miller used. The first half of the concert featured famed New York cabaret singer Steve Ross, backed up by the concert band. It had the makings of a great evening.
It wasn't. It was in Woolsey Hall. Therein lies the problem.
As has every concert I have ever attended at Woolsey, it started late. 17 minutes late. 17 minutes of sitting in the stuffy, uncomfortable, wooden-seated, terrible sight-lined Woolsey Hall. When it did start I remembered immediately the main reason I hate this space: it has perhaps the worst acoustics of any performing arts space in America. Even when Mr. Ross was playing solo piano and singing into the microphone, he could not be understood. Many in the audience, me included, know a lot of Cole Porter songs by heart; the songs I did not know, I still do not know. Words were indecipherable.
Ross's performance was good, not great. I'd give him a B+. The arrangements were less successful; in many cases they served to further muddle the sound, though whether arrangements exist that can sound good in Woolsey is open to question. I'd give them a C+. The acoustics? An F. Absolutely.
Yale knows how bad the acoustics are here. Ask any musician forced to play in this barn. Ask the New Haven Symphony, which presents concerts here as well. In the interest of full disclosure, I must add that Woolsey is home to the fabulous Newberry Memorial Organ; it sounds fantastic in this cavernous space. It is the ONLY thing that does. And the Yale organists are probably the only people on the planet who want to preserve Woolsey as is.
I didn't stay for the Miller. 95 minutes after the supposed starting time of the concert the intermission still dragged on; why this was so, I don't know. I do not blame Duffy or his people; I blame again Woolsey Hall; the backstage area is so tiny that set changes are incredibly difficult. There are no wings to speak of, no fly space at all. Because I had heard this show twice before, I split.
Two days later I drove to Hartford to hear a brilliant concert (Tchaikovsky's beloved piano concerto, Barber's Medea and Mozart's 40th Symphony). I parked my car at eight minutes before three and was in my seat four minutes later; there was no mad crush at the door, no long line waiting to pick up tickets, no confusion as people try to decipher a bizarre seat numbering system – all problems endemic to Woolsey. The Belding Theatre, part of the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, is a 900 seat, two-level theatre with superb sight-lines and warm, rich acoustics.
The Hartford Symphony is an excellent ensemble which rarely fails to impress. Sunday's performance featured a wunderkind, CT high-school junior Alex Beyer absolutely nailing the Tchaikovsky. The Barber was equally exciting but the most nuanced and ultimately rewarding playing came during the Mozart. It was a great concert in a comfortable and appealing space. I should also add the the Hartford Symphony does a great job of taking care of its patrons; one example: automatic phone reminders of possible traffic delays or unusual start times. Oh, and they start on time, given that “on time” has come to mean “within 5-8 minutes of the posted time” in every venue in America.
In all ways these two concert experiences were as different as night and day. I am glad I live in the New Haven area; I just wish New Haven and Yale would take the arts as seriously as Hartford does.
Belding Theatre, Bushnell Performing Arts Center, Hartford, CT
Photo by Robert Benson
I am sorry to hear about the first experience. It reminds me of Memorial Auditorium in Raleigh, which despite major money spent for renovations over the past 70 years, still sounds like a barn with an uneven amount of hay stored at one end and bent baffles in the ceilings.
ReplyDeleteBecause it was a Memorial to WWI (opened in 1932, a WPA type Project, I think) it has been almost heresy to suggest tearing it down and starting over. In the last 20 years at least 10 million has been spent. I hear no reports to indicate the acoustics are any better. "Cats" and "Les Miz" were both staged there with sound so muddled I had no idea what the songs were until I saw both on Broadway years later.
People get so tied to the architecture and the history of a building they cannot seem to accept it wasn't very good at what it was built to do. In this case, it seems Woolsey might have been designed for that organ and nothing else will ever work there. I am a fan of Porter and Miller but you got to hear the lyrics for it to be any fun, particularly Porter. My condolences....