The incomparable Jamie Barton performs Jan. 26 at Memorial Hall
Baby it’s cold outside – but Winter is the season when the arts heat up. In the coming weeks, there are many tempting concerts and events to warm you up. So, bundle up, because there are a few that you won’t want to miss.
Jan. 11-12: Canticle. The Vocal Arts Ensemble reprises Kile Smith’s gorgeous “Canticle,” a setting of the biblical Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs), 7:30 p.m. Jan. 11 and 12 in Memorial Hall. Tickets start at $25. 513-381-3300, vaecinci.org.
Jan. 12-13: Conlon returns. James Conlon, music director laureate of the Cincinnati May Festival, returns to conduct the CSO in Schubert’s Rosamunde Overture and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Violinist Jennifer Frautschi is soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday in Music Hall. Tickets: 513-381-3300, cincinnatisymphony.org.
James Conlon at the 2016 May Festival Photo provided
Jan. 19: Star soloist at Moveable Feast. CCM’s biggest fundraiser, this year on Friday, Jan. 19, will feature a performance by alumnus and star trumpeter Brian Newman, who will solo with the CCM Jazz Orchestra as the “opening course” in the CCM Village. Read More »
The orchestra is now seated on risers, shown here on the “thrust” stage.
The year 2017 was a year of big change for Cincinnati’s arts organizations. The most significant story – one that garnered a large piece in the New York Times — was about Music Hall, home to the city’s major performing arts groups, which finished up a massive, ambitious renovation costing at least $143 million.
Music Hall reopened with fanfare on Oct. 6 and 7. The weekend included a community open house that drew thousands. Opening night revelers basked in the elegant new decor and patron-friendly amenities, which include cup holders for the first time on wider seats, more bars and more restrooms.
Reuben Springer now presides over a new bar at Music Hall.
There are now more than 1,000 fewer seats and Springer Auditorium is physically smaller. The musicians sit on risers on a new “thrust” stage, 12 feet closer to the audience than before. All of that – including new materials such as concrete floors – means that the acousticians are still in the “tuning” phase of what is really a new hall-within-a-hall.
Memorial Hall’s renovation beautifully preserved the historic theater (built by Hannaford & Sons) and also enhanced the acoustics. Shown here with the Vocal Arts Ensemble. Photo by Michael T. Moore, Jr.
The renovation was just one sign of the importance of Cincinnati’s growing arts district surrounding Washington Park. Read More »
The CSO and Paavo Järvi, music director laureate, in Music Hall on Friday.
Music director laureate Paavo Järvi returned to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on Friday, conducting for the first time in the all-new Music Hall. It was just like old times. Well, almost.
Järvi’s energized leadership and a top-notch piano soloist, Alice Sara Ott, added up to a gripping program for the CSO’s first morning concert of the season. But even more uplifting than the performance was the sound that Järvi achieved in the hall.Read More »
Melissa Gelfin and Cervilio Miguel Amador were stunning in the leading roles of Cincinnati Ballet’s “Romeo and Juliet” over the weekend.
Cincinnati Ballet’s production of “Romeo and Juliet” over the weekend offered another chance to hear Music Hall’s new acoustics from a different perspective – in a ballet set-up.
Much as before the renovation, the best experience for concertgoers in terms of the sound depends upon where one sits. But you must also consider the “configuration” of the hall for the type of show that is being mounted.
For the ballet at the Sunday matinee, the orchestra was in the pit – as it will also be for Cincinnati Opera productions. It was a treat to hear the orchestra playing Prokofiev’s magnificent score to “Romeo and Juliet,” which I’ve heard many times as an orchestral suite in concert. It was led with a sure hand by ballet maestro Carmon DeLeone and superbly played by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
Artistic director Victoria Morgan’s production was gorgeous in every way. As Juliet, Melissa Gelfin delivered a ravishing performance and her Romeo, Cervilio Miguel Amador, was the perfect romantic hero. But I was also curious about David Lyman’s comment in his excellent review for The Enquirer about “the many drawbacks of seeing ballet in Music Hall.”
From the gallery, the ballet performance onstage indeed seemed far away from the audience. The entire show took place behind the proscenium arch, with a very large orchestra pit in front of the stage. To me, the large pit detracted from the viewer’s focus on the stage.
The orchestra sounded magnificent but the large pit made the performers seem far away.The view of final bows from the gallery (second balcony)
But it’s ironic that this configuration – with the orchestra in the pit — offered the best sound I’ve heard this season for the listener. I sat in the GALLERY for the first time since the hall opened on Oct. 6.
Gone was the muddiness of previous weeks. The brass and winds were exceptionally clear and powerful. The string sound was much better, except in big climaxes, where it was easy for the brass to overpower.
The focus of the sound was also better. I recalled a comment from a retired musician, who thought that the orchestra needed a more embracing acoustical shell surrounding them on three sides. In fact, the walls of the pit may have actually provided that, perhaps the reason for a better sound.
Other impressions: The city has doubled the cost of parking in Town Center Garage this year, to $10. Parking in Washington Park Garage, owned by 3CDC, is now $15 for shows. I parked behind Music Hall and walked around to the front of the building. The weather was cold and raw, and I felt badly for the older people and children that I saw trying to get across the four lanes of Central Parkway to get to the front door. There were no police officers assisting, as there have been for CSO concerts.
It’s too bad that the ballet matinee was so sparsely attended. Whether the poor attendance was a result of not enough marketing, uncertainty about parking or the cold weather, I hope it’s not a harbinger of audiences to come. Especially now, in the beautifully freshened and updated hall, the dancers – and the orchestra – deserve to have a full house every time.
The orchestra’s “Friday Orange” event included some creepy visitors in the lobby, wrapping and unwrapping themselves.
Three women wrapped and unwrapped themselves in long streams of ribbon for Friday Orange (director Annie Saunders)
The opera, presented in a semi-staged concert version, provided another chance to hear the new acoustics in Music Hall. For this concert, I sat in two different locations, as you’ll see in the review.
A scene from the opera on a platform behind the orchestra. Lee Snow, photo.
It was the first time the orchestra has performed with voice in the hall since the $143 million renovation was completed.
For this performance, the orchestra was positioned in a different configuration from those on Opening Night and last week at the Pops.
Next weekend, I plan to go to Cincinnati Ballet’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which will have the CSO in the pit for the first time. And on Nov. 4, the May Festival Chorus will join for yet another set-up.
My view from row 2 of the new terrace seating, right side.
A rendering of the set. Photo provided: CSO/Adam Rigg
James Darrah likes to point out that he has curated the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s “Pelleas Trilogy” in three different phases of Music Hall’s renovation.
CSO music director Louis Langrée’s three year project exploring Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1893 play, “Pelléas et Mélisande” began with Arnold Schoenberg’s tone poem in Music Hall – pre-renovation. It continued last year with Gabriel Fauré’s incidental music to the play when the orchestra was displaced at the Taft Theater.
This weekend, the project culminates in Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande” in the newly renovated Music Hall. The performance is in collaboration with Cincinnati Opera.
“It’s been really fun to bring an opera to life in this space,” says the Los Angeles-based director and designer. “We’re all still learning what we can and can’t do (in the theater). Some things are familiar and some different.”Read More »
Music Hall has new acoustical treatments, such as these new “clouds” overhead.
Acoustic: əˈko͞ostik/ (plural acoustics): “The properties or qualities of a room … that determine how sound is transmitted.” (Dictionary.com)
In the words of the dean of acoustics, Leo Beranek, acoustics is “the science of sound.” Things such as resonance, frequency (pitch), amplitude, wave reflections and delay times affect how we hear music, he writes in “How they Sound: Concert and Opera Halls.”
Music Hall, formerly made of wood and plaster-over-brick, now has concrete floors, walls moved inward and a stage that is now 12 feet closer to the audience. A few days before it reopened after its $143 million renovation, I met with acoustical consultant Paul Scarbrough of Akustiks in Springer Auditorium to find out how he and colleague Chris Blair have been making acoustical adjustments to what is now a new concert “hall within a hall.”
Question: Music Hall has very good acoustics, and you’ve said that your goal is to build on that. Now, how has the sound of the hall changed?Read More »
Example of a parade such as will be seen at BLINK tonight at 7 p.m. Photo provided
BLINK starts tonight with a parade from Findlay Market to Washington Park in OTR. What exactly is BLINK? Think Lumenocity on steriods. The four-night event, 7 p.m. to midnight each night, is a spectacle of light “projection mapping,” art installations, lighted displays, Cincinnati’s famous murals “painted” with light, and much more, along the path of the Cincinnati Bell Connector. There will be interactive displays for “hands-on” participation as well as live entertainment all along the 3.6 mile streetcar line, from Findlay Market to The Banks.
And it’s all free.
“It’s shaped around unity and the values we hold as a community,” says Timothy Maloney, president & CEO of the Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation, founding sponsor.
But with 60 attractions spanning 20 city blocks, you need a plan. Take it all in (or parts of it over a few days) by planning dinner, drinks or a performance in tandem. I plan to go the Cincinnati Pops season opener in the newly renovated Music Hall — which is incidentally right across the street from many of the attractions, and right on the streetcar line. I might decide to just jump on the streetcar and hop on and off.
“CINCINNATI – A $143 million renovation of the National Historic Landmark pushed the orchestra forward, narrowed the room, and cut 1,000 seats. In the Cincinnati Symphony’s homecoming, the acoustics were still a work in progress.”
Read my first impressions of Music Hall’s acoustics by clicking here: “Old is New Again in Cincinnati’s Reborn Music Hall” at Classical Voice North America, journal of the Music Critics Association of North America.
I went back on Saturday for the free Community Open House, and was amazed to see thousands of people of all ages and some with strollers and wheelchairs, pouring through the doors and visiting every nook and cranny of the hall. Read More »
“CINCINNATI – A $143 million renovation of the National Historic Landmark pushed the orchestra forward, narrowed the room, and cut 1,000 seats. In the Cincinnati Symphony’s homecoming, the acoustics were still a work in progress.”
I went back on Saturday for the free Community Open House, and was amazed to see thousands of people of all ages and some with strollers and wheelchairs, pouring through the doors and visiting every nook and cranny of the hall. 