Recital Hall Research Articles

Improvement of stage acoustics in a small circular-shaped recital hall

This paper investigates how stage acoustics can be improved by the installation of on-stage reflectors in a small recital hall with a circular floor plan. The target hall, which is designed as a second floor with a seating capacity of 533, has an average reverberation time of 1.31 seconds in the mid-frequency band at the audience seats when empty, and an average side reflection sound ratio of 0.4. The target hall, assessed as having a circular planar shape with wide left and right sides compared to its depth, is not conducive to performers. Therefore, we measured the stage acoustics according to ISO 3382-1, with a grid spacing of 1 m above the stage. We created a simulation model based on the measurement results. To enhance the stage acoustics, a movable reflector was placed on the stage, and the effective area of the stage surrounded by the reflector was varied and compared through simulation. The results indicated that as the effective area of the stage surrounded by the reflector decreased, STEarly improved. Meanwhile, in the audience, the installation of stage reflectors showed no significant difference in reverberation time or clarity, but the sound pressure level was slightly improved.

Listening to the structure: Mass-timber construction at the Groton Hill Music Center

Historically, Western music spaces were built with massive masonry-bearing walls. While these designs offer structural and acoustical benefits, today’s construction culture is conscious of more fluid forms and embodied carbon, which influences how consultants think about the design of spaces for music. The recently completed Groton Hill Music Center is unique for its use of mass timber’s sculptural capabilities to shape performance space acoustic volumes forthrightly, with little additional finish treatment. The center features studio classrooms for students of all ages, an orchestral rehearsal space, a 300-seat recital hall for soloists and small ensembles, and a grand 1000-seat concert hall that opens to view for a 500-seat lawn audience. Structure and architecture are largely unified, with one’s acoustic experience defined by the sculpted mass timber structure. The comparatively light-weight timber/concrete composite structure represents a significant and somewhat acoustically risky reduction in mass to provide an acoustically warm environment. This presentation will explore how the structure was optimized to provide stiffness and multi-scale diffusion, taking the ideals of classic concert hall design, and embracing contemporary construction technologies and acoustical analyses.

Review: Duo Precipice in recital. Ann Fronckowiak, oboe, and Cristian Zavala, percussion. March 30, 2022. Faculty and Guest Recital. Recital Hall, Texas A&M University, Kingsville, TX.

Review: Duo Precipice in recital. Ann Fronckowiak, oboe, and Cristian Zavala, percussion. March 30, 2022. Faculty and Guest Recital. Recital Hall, Texas A&M University, Kingsville, TX.

Duo Precipice in recital. Ann Fronckowiak, oboe, and Cristian Zavala, percussion. March 30, 2022. Faculty and Guest Recital. Recital Hall, Texas A&M University, Kingsville, TX.

Duo Precipice in recital. Ann Fronckowiak, oboe, and Cristian Zavala, percussion. March 30, 2022. Faculty and Guest Recital. Recital Hall, Texas A&M University, Kingsville, TX.

Mobilizing personal networks into concert audiences: The differential multilevel effects in an art convention

As a specific art convention, graduating music students in college often invite network members to attend their degree recitals. This customary practice of network mobilization involves two types of tie effects that seemingly conflicted with each other, which became more acute when the practice abruptly changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on invitation and attendance records collected from seventy-one recitals in a span of two decades before (N = 4866) and during the pandemic (N = 428) in Taiwan, multilevel analysis helped untangle which concert and tie features contributed to successful invitations at both the recital and invitation levels. Recruiting a larger proportion of weak ties helped boost the overall attendance at the recital level, while strong ties ensured positive responses to individual invitations in terms of both meeting at the recital hall and recalling the recital, particularly before the pandemic. More importantly, certain cross-level effects changed during the pandemic while others remained intact.

On Site: Methods for Site-Specific Performance Creation by Stephan Koplowitz

Reviewed by: On Site: Methods for Site-Specific Performance Creation by Stephan Koplowitz KT Shorb They/Them On Site: Methods for Site-Specific Performance Creation. Stephan Koplowitz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022; pp. xvii + 303. Written by veteran site-specific dancer and choreographer Stephan Koplowitz, On Site: Methods for Site-Specific Performance Creation is part of a proliferation of books published in the last five years on live performance created site-specifically. With COVID-19 shutting down traditional theatres and recital halls, many artists and organizations pivoted to site-specific performance to keep artists and audiences safe while addressing a hunger for live and in-person cultural experiences. During quarantine, we saw a wide range of approaches to site-specificity, with varied levels of success. While the desire to maintain some kind of normalcy by continuing the ritual of in-person attendance has shown audiences to be exceedingly patient with technical and creative glitches, the ability to work adeptly with "site" has revealed itself to be a unique creative muscle—one that requires cultivation. Despite most traditional venues reopening, site-specific work addresses more needs now than ever. For many performing artists, to work "on site" is no longer an idiosyncratic approach limited to a select experimental few. It is now a skill required of every director, choreographer, and performance artist. On Site is a timely and detailed manual to guide those seeking to hone such a skill. A practical handbook for artists, On Site draws heavily from Koplowitz's three-decade long career as a choreographer, director, and producer. In addition, it includes information Koplowitz drew from his interviews with twenty-four artists, producers, and writers of site-specific work, including: Joanna Haigood, Debby Kajiyama, Noémie Lafrance, José Ome Navarrete Mazatl, Jennifer Monson, and Amara Tabor-Smith. Their words and documentation of their creative work appear in the book seamlessly alongside the author's. Koplowitz makes an argument for the heightened need for well-considered site-specific work in our current sociohistorical moment. He also notes that the history of site-specific work has been dominated by white practitioners and explicitly states one goal of the book is to provide tools for practitioners to diversify the field. Structured in six parts, On Site follows a loose production calendar, starting with conceptual definitions of "site-specific" through developing an idea, securing a site, preproduction, content generation, rehearsal, and concluding with performance and postproduction. Two parts explicate business considerations for producer-artists. Sections covering the actual genesis and process of creating content for site work are practice-as-research case studies from Koplowitz's most well-known works. Unlike a few other books that provide exercises for developing work (Phil Smith's Making Site-Specific Theatre and Performance and Mike Pearson's Site-Specific Performance, for example), Koplowitz instead offers examples with reflections and questions for artists to contemplate in relation to their own creative processes. A chapter on collaboration incorporates the voices of his interviewees and explores multiple modes of engaging with designers and design elements. Several chapters address various "challenges" that include performer and audience safety as well as ways to expand accessibility for collaborators and audiences who are both disabled and nondisabled. On Site is a strongly written, well-organized reference manual for the early to mid-career creator-producer. Koplowitz's clarity of prose interwoven with other well-respected artists' observations and advice makes On Site well poised to become a foundational practical text for future site-specific choreographers and directors. It offers concise information on potential pitfalls and ethical considerations for the artist. In addition, Koplowitz includes many philosophical and thoughtful asides on important contemporary subjects such as land use in colonized Indigenous territory, capacious notions of accessibility, and reflections on the democratizing and politically engaged effects of site work. Parts I and II offer introductory information on site work that could be useful in studio and criticism classes wishing to impart some basic concepts to students. Parts III and VI cover business and documentation issues valuable to all independent artists, not only those creating site-specific work. These parts could be assigned in arts management courses. Parts IV and V are useful to...

An Interview with Composer and Pianist Nina Siniakova

The journal Problemy muzykal'noi nauki / Music Scholarship would like to present its readers with an interview with Nina Siniakova, a composer and pianist of a diverse cultural background and broad interests. Her music explores the eternal subjects of beauty, love, life, and death. Her colleagues describe her style as “unique and refined,” (Mark Hagerty, composer, USA) and that in their opinion makes Nina Siniakova “one of the most interesting composers of her generation.” (Krzysztof Meyer, Professor Emeritus, Cologne Hochschule für Musik) Her interests in musical genres span from music written in the contemporary classical style to minimalism, jazz, easy listening, and music for children. Nina Siniakova is active as a composer, pianist, educator, and a sales representative at Cunningham Piano Company in Philadelphia. A Doctor of Musical Arts, she was born in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, received her education at the Minsk Glinka Music College, the St. Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory and the Musikhochschule in Cologne. Besides having developed her activities in music she has also studied theatrical acting professionally. Siniakova is a recipient of numerous awards, including the First Prize and the People’s Choice Award at the XII Open Competition of Composers named after Andrei Petrov in St. Petersburg, Russia (in the nomination “symphonic music” for her Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra), a stipend from the DAAD (the German Students’ Exchange Service), a stipend of Exploring the Metropolis program NYC and many others. As a pianist and a composer, she has appeared at the Carnegie Weill Recital Hall, Symphony Space in New York, Harvard University, the Beethoven House in Bonn, the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and the Zink jazz Bar in New York. With such an assortment of diverse accomplishments in music, Nina Siniakova appeared to be the perfect musician to take an interview from which the readers of the journal would find of great substance.

Loudness control in a small volume Recital Hall

Mississippi State University’s new music building features a 173-seat Lecture Hall that also serves as a recital hall. The limited volume presents an acoustical challenge to accommodate a variety of uses—most concerning are the louder and larger ensembles with up to 25 musicians and 50 singers sharing the stage. Due to project-specific constraints, the 24 foot stage-to-ceiling height and the 60,000 cubic foot volume are less than the early design-phase recommendations for the expected uses, which raises concerns about loudness buildup and inability to generate desired reverberation. Our goal is to implement variable loudness control systems that provide a useful reverberation range with good clarity across different settings. We identify and justify four loudness control strategies—maintain early, supportive reflections; shape the room to form patterns of sustained sound in areas with adjustable absorption; reduce high-frequency sustain in areas near audiences; avoid flutter echoes—and illustrate how those strategies were integrated into the architectural design through room shaping, fixed wall treatments, and deployable curtains and banners. We discuss subjective and instrumented observations about the loudness (measured in Sound Strength G), reverberation time (measured in T30), clarity (measured in Clarity Index C80), and overall character of the room response.

Recital Hall into existing structure limited height space

Renovations for a college Fine Arts program desired to reincorporate multiple art departments that had become scattered over various locations throughout campus into an existing mid-century architecture legacy building. Included in the renovation program is a 130 seat Recital Hall, Instrumental Music Labs, and Commercial Music Recording program. The particular small rooms challenge presented is that the 130 seat Recital Hall must fit within an existing concrete waffle slab structure with a height of 17 feet from floor to bottom of structure and a total room volume of only 30,000 cubic feet. This presentation will walk through the challenges of providing an acceptable room acoustic environment for recitals amongst the other design challenges of ADA accessibility, sound separation to other arts programs, modern MEP services and requirements, and limitations of existing structural capacity.

Review: In the House of the Muses: Collection, Display, and Performance in the Veronese Palace of Mario Bevilacqua (1536–93)

Review: <i>In the House of the Muses: Collection, Display, and Performance in the Veronese Palace of Mario Bevilacqua (1536–93)</i>

Recital halls for K-12, higher education, and community music education: A trio of case studies

The recital halls at Deerfield Academy, UMass Boston, and the Brattleboro Music Center each play a critical role at the center of the music education programs at these institutions. Deerfield's 160-seat Elizabeth Wachsman Concert Hall, at the independent high school's Hess Center for the Arts, is both intimate and warmly resonant, and features adjustable curtains at the stage to suit varying repertoire for rehearsal and performance, particularly of Deerfield's student music ensembles. The 150-seat recital hall at UMass Boston's University Hall serves an even wider array of ensembles, from classical choral to jazz, in a building that not only serves the Performing Arts Department but also Chemistry and other general-purpose classrooms; the adjustable curtains there surround the audience on all sides. In Brattleboro, a 331-seat recital hall is the crown jewel of a new community music center that also serves as the home to a Chamber Music Series and a range of ensembles including Juno Orchestra, a concert choir, chorale, and camerata, and the music center's “Educate. Open. Strengthen.” Program. These three rooms all serve critical pedagogical missions, but each with a different focus and a different set of needs and constraints that impact budget, architecture, and acoustical design considerations.

Auralization of a flexible recital hall

Auralizations have proven to be a powerful tool when it comes to the design phase of a room. They allow consultants to analyze and convey the acoustical challenges to make decisions accordingly. For this presentation, we look at the process of creating auralizations for a multipurpose recital hall, and how the different configurations of the room affect it acoustically. The recital hall will need to accommodate a large variety of rehearsals and performances, ranging from solo musicians to large combined ensembles. Therefore the balance between stage, audience, and ensemble must be kept in mind, spatially and acoustically. This project and presentation is thanks to the SURIEA program; an intensive summer program that emphasizes training, mentoring, research, and preparing students for graduate studies and careers in acoustics. As part of the program, students were paired with mentors to work on a project, and present their results in the next ASA conference.

Toward a more versatile venue: The Hahn Recital Hall renovation at the Music Academy of the West, Montecito, CA

The Music Academy of the West was founded in 1947 by German operatic soprano and lieder singer, Lotte Lehmann and Otto Klemperer and has evolved to be regularly lauded as the “Julliard of the West.” Because their 1970s, 350-seat Recital Hall could no longer properly serve as a suitable recital hall or rehearsal hall, MCH was retained in 2005 to design a full overhaul to ensure the hall could wonderfully serve ensembles ranging from 2 or 3 musicians to the 70-piece Santa Barbara Symphony in rehearsal. It serves now as the home of Marilyn Horne’s Vocal Institute. We present our design process that involved major reshaping, mitigating rail traffic 300 ft away, a new HVAC system, a sensitive re-do of the copious stage (including mitigating practice rooms below), designing novel recital screens, providing variable acoustics and an 11th hour effort to accommodate “Met Live!”.

The acoustical design of the Imig Music Building addition—An end user’s perspective and an acoustician’s perspective

The design of the Imig Music Building addition at the University of Colorado/Boulder, which started in 2017, culminated in a building opening in Spring 2021. The facility includes a dedicated recital hall, a large ensemble rehearsal room with flexibility to double as a recital hall, a choral rehearsal room, theatre rehearsal room, and dance rehearsal studio along with many music teaching studios, practice rooms, and other acoustically sensitive spaces to support the College of Music’s program. The footprint of the building addition was very limited, resulting in an unusually large number of acoustically critical horizontal and vertical adjacencies. Perspectives on the design process and the successful resulting building will be presented by the end user and the acoustician. One goal of this presentation is to help attendees understand how to translate end user goals into acoustic design criteria and communicate those criteria to the other design team members (architects, engineers, and other specialty consultants such as theatre consultants).

Modifying a recital hall to extend its range of use: A case study

Rosen Concert Hall, in the Broyhill Music Center at the Appalachian State University Hayes School of Music, is a beloved 400-seat recital hall designed in the 1980s by architect Dennis Yates and acoustician Rein Pirn (Acentech/BBN) and was featured in the 1990 ASA publication “Acoustical Design of Music Education Facilities.” The hall was designed for pipe organ, vocal chorus, and smaller classical instrumental ensembles, with significant variable absorption in the form of curtains. Since then, the school’s program has broadened, and the hall is now used also for jazz band, large wind ensemble, and some amplified forms. A 2017 study included acoustical measurements in the hall, listening sessions with eight different ensembles in the hall, and discussions with faculty and staff. These resulted in detailed recommendations for acoustical improvements and new audiovisual equipment. The school has completed two recommended acoustical improvements, with positive results: hinged absorptive wall panels surrounding the platform, and extended reflective canopy. Users report improved on-platform clarity for louder ensembles, and better self-hearing and presence of sound for downstage performance locations.

Design thinking of the Multiform Theatre: A case study

Multiform Theatres are perhaps the most complex theatres to design. They must support the artistic aspirations of musicians, actors, dancers, directors, designers, and visual and aural artists in one highly flexible, transformable space. A true Multiform Theatre seamlessly supports the creation of art through automated architecture altering the Artist/Audience relationship and adapting to the artist’s spatial needs, while providing adaptable technical and acoustic opportunities that inspire new artistic forms. When done right, the architecture itself becomes part of the artistic process. How does one space change from a 625-seat Concert Hall to a 350-seat Recital Hall to a 250-seat Proscenium Theatre to a laboratory for Immersive Environments, Research and Experimentation? Join Scott Crossfield, ASTC from Theatre Projects as he guides you through the design thinking behind the new Multiform Theatre at Brown University—a radical, one-of-a-kind theatre machine designed to inspire innovative new art making, enable unprecedented artistic collaboration and serve as a hub for performance at the Brown University.

OCR: Recital hall's accessibility services raised compliance issues

Case name: Letter re: Kent State University, No. 01‐22‐2020 (OCR 01/22/20).

Missouri Experimental Sonic Arts Festival (MOXsonic)

Missouri Experimental Sonic Arts Festival (MOXsonic)

South Dakota State University

Shortly after South Dakota set out to design their new performing arts center to support their music and theatre programs in 1997, they discovered the cost to construct these facilities was roughly double their budget. After 6 years of planning and design, the phase 1 performing arts center opened. Then, after an additional 5 years, the University was able to raise enough money to construct the second phase of their performing arts center which included a state—of-the-art large proscenium theatre, rehearsal rooms for choir and large instrumental ensembles, a jewel box recital hall with a pipe organ, music teaching studios and practice rooms. The accommodation of the pipe organ into the design of the recital hall was especially challenging because the pipe organ was originally designed and installed in a much larger and different-shaped church. Pipe organ music was not a high priority for the use of the new recital hall, and therefore some special accommodations were made to improve the sound of the pipe organ without compromising the acoustics for the room’s primary use as a recital hall.

Missouri State University—Ellis Hall

Missouri State University Ellis Hall is a 1957 modernist building originally designed for the music department. The building was mostly untouched over the years, despite poor sound isolation and unremarkable, undersized performance spaces. Kirkegaard worked closely with Patterhn Ives on a comprehensive renovation that included replacing the building mechanical systems and much of its exterior curtain wall. The interior is a virtual gut/rehabilitation, but wherever possible existing walls were incorporated into new sound-isolating assemblies to avoid unnecessary expense. The substantial scale of the project compared to the very limited budget required the design team to find carefully calibrated solutions for what to reuse and what to replace. One of the greatest challenges was to provide an acoustic superior recital hall, a goal that the School of Music emphasized as critical to the future of their program, from a renovation of the low-ceilinged existing recital hall. The solution was to demolish the hall's floor slab to capture the room volume from an under-used rehearsal room below, while preserving the upstage pipe organ and a handsome wood side wall. The result is a very successful new 240 seat recital hall in the shell of the old hall.