After decades of setbacks, the New York Philharmonic will finally perform in a gut-renovated concert hall in October.
“The key is—two years early—on budget and on schedule,” says a triumphant Deborah Borda, the president and chief executive officer of the New York Philharmonic, standing under a scaffold in what will be the completely revamped concert hall.
A happy ending was by no means guaranteed.
The venue, set at New York’s Lincoln Center, had problems almost as soon as its doors opened in 1962. Concertgoers and performers complained that the sound was muddy and deadening.
A significant renovation in 1976, which saw the venue’s name change from Philharmonic Hall to Avery Fisher Hall, didn’t do much to solve things. “The hall has always had its acoustic challenges,” Borda says. “The hall was originally meant to have an acoustic envelope for 2,200 people, and for a variety of reasons—five months before the opening—it was changed to 2,800 people.”
The most recent effort was jump-started by a $100 million gift in 2015 from billionaire David Geffen. But even that led to a series of false starts and revised plans for the renamed David Geffen Hall, culminating in Geffen publicly airing complaints in 2017, telling the New York Times “that a city that has as many wealthy individuals who’ve made a fortune in New York—that they couldn’t show up and support the most important cultural institution in New York, I think is too bad and shameful.”
One of the critical sticking points was what to do with the orchestra while the renovation was underway. There was little appetite to displace concerts for years on end, so in 2019 the Philharmonic finally announced a phased renovation that would trim the orchestra’s concert season and close the space for renovations during the summer. Construction was supposed to begin this year and finish in 2024.
But when Covid-19 hit, leadership at the Philharmonic and Lincoln Center saw an opportunity: Live concerts had been canceled, obviating the need for a phased construction timeline. Suddenly, they could do it in one fell swoop.
“As we talk about this project, we’ve talked about what’s inside the building, the artistic achievement, and the kind of civic achievement,” says Henry Timms, the president and CEO of Lincoln Center. “But there’s a bigger idea here, which is what this could do for New York. And that was really at the heart of what we were trying to do, at a time when there were so many winds against us.”
Rallying a team that includes Diamond Schmitt Architects, which spearheaded the theater design, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, which addressed the public spaces, and Turner Construction Co., the project’s construction manager, work began in spring 2021.
Subsequent progress has been so swift that, seven months before opening night, the project’s leadership has now publicly committed to a hard October completion date. “We have had the great success to raise $550 million to build the project,” says Katherine Farley, the chair of the board of Lincoln Center. “And we’re continuing, thanks to the goodwill of New Yorkers and the enthusiasm of our supporters, to raise a little more.”
What’s Inside
Those supporters will discover a totally new interior. In the lobby, the box office will be removed in favor of a general purpose welcome center on the Broadway side of the ground floor. “If you remember the old David Geffen Hall, you remember coming through this space, and it was quite transactional,” says Timms.
In its stead, the lobby’s floorspace will double, leaving room for a lounge, bar, food concessions, and most promising, a 50-foot-wide screen (dubbed “the Digital Stage” by the Philharmonic), which will livestream performances to members of the public, who can wander in to watch, free of charge. “When the New York Philharmonic is playing, you can walk by, get a cup of coffee, and bring your kids,” Timms continues.
During off hours, the screen will serve as a showcase for digital art works, which will be commissioned with guidance from the Public Art Fund and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
The escalators to the second floor’s Grand Promenade have been moved to the building’s sides, adding significant space to the main reception area, where there will be seating, a black granite bar, and access to the building’s picturesque outdoor terrace.
Decoration in the public spaces will also change: Ceilings will be a deep blue, and the walls will be decorated in a motif reminiscent of falling petals. The same motif will extend to the seats in the revised auditorium.
The new auditorium design removes 538 seats, chopping its total capacity to 2,200, as originally intended. Fisher Dachs Associates, the theater design consultant, advised on sightlines and the seating configuration.
The stage will be moved forward by 25 feet. This will not only allow seat placements closer to the stage, but also wrap some seats around the orchestra in what is known as “vineyard style” design. Parts of the stage will be able to rise out of the floor, expanding performance space, or submerge, expanding audience capacity. Sightlines have been improved by steepening the rake of the hall.
The most notable change will probably be to the hall’s acoustics, completely revamped by design firm Akustiks, using custom, rippling, and channeled wood paneling on the walls. The result will be improved reverberation, bass, and sound differentiation. Additionally, the removal of the excess seating should, representatives say, improve the overall sound quality in the hall. “We have a process, a physical tuning, starting late this summer and fall, Borda says, “where the Philharmonic will come into the hall.” They’ll rehearse, she continues, while technicians literally tweak the walls to improve the sound. “There are actually changes we can make if we’re not comfortable with what it sounds like,” she says.
Beyond the main hall, a former conference room on the northeast side of the building will now be a small performance-community event space called the Sidewalk Studio; the Philharmonic will commission artists to create works to cover the building’s. (In a rendering shown during the building tour, one example appeared to be by the artist Julie Mehretu.) Even the HVAC systems are getting major upgrades.
“It will be beautiful,” says Lincoln Center’s Farley. “What will make us happy is if the inner sanctum—the theater space—is the best sound anywhere in the world for the New York Philharmonic and if these public spaces are really jumping, 18 hours a day.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.
