Symphony Hall Research Articles

Falling from a Height Holding Hands: For Large Orchestra and Chorus

Falling from a height holding hands sets poetry of Gary Snyder for mixed chorus (SATB) and orchestra. Its duration in performance is about seven minutes. The Boston University Symphony and Symphonic Chorus gave the premiere performance at Boston’s Symphony Hall on April 22, 2009. When I heard Gary Snyder read this poem on a podcast from the Poetry Foundation web site I was deeply moved. In his Danger On Peaks I found the text in print. In a few concentrated lines Snyder presents half a conversation, and reminds us of the sharp clarity of that moment that touched us all. Musical images crowd the mind, and I was quickly overwhelmed by a project I could not neither stop nor avoid. Once heard, this poem cannot be unheard, and the piece seized me. There are two forces here that cannot be resolved: one turbulent, confounded, uncertain, and the other calm, resolved, and clear. The latter is how the poem speaks, and at times it is almost serene. The final image, the falcon, is particularly so. Snyder frequently speaks of the “most archaic” values he holds as a poet, and as a naturalist, he knows the primordial first hand, and he allows us to draw from it as from a deep well.

Measuring brand image effects of flagship projects for place brands: The case of Hamburg

Cities invest large sums of money in ‘flagship projects’, with the aim of not only developing the city as such, but also changing the perceptions of the city brand towards a desired image. The city of Hamburg, Germany, is currently investing €575 million in order to build a new symphony hall (Elbphilharmonie), €400 million to develop the ‘International Architectural Fair’ and it is also considering candidature again for the ‘Olympic Games’ in 2024/2028. As assessing the image effects of such projects is rather difficult, this article introduces an improved version of the Brand Concept Map approach, which was originally developed for product brands. An experimental design was used to first measure the Hamburg brand as such and then the changes in the brand perceptions after priming the participants (N=209) for one of the three different flagship projects. The findings reveal several important structural differences for the brand image dimensions of the city contingent upon the type of flagship project. Hence, this study shows (i) that different flagship projects have different image effects for the city brand and (ii) provides a novel method for measuring perceived place brand image effects of both ongoing and future flagship projects.

Boston: Saariaho's ‘Circle Map’

When the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra wanted to commission Kaija Saariaho for a work to perform at the Westergasfabriek Gashoulder, a gasholder building restored as a performance space, it did so through a consortium including the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony. The Boston Symphony, conducted by Juanjo Mena, gave the first American performance of the work, entitled Circle Map, in Symphony Hall in November.

Acoustic design of the Philharmonic Hall in the Shanghai Oriental Art Center

The Shanghai Oriental Art Center opened officially on July. 2005 is one of the largest performance art centers in the domestic. It mainly consists of the 2000 seats philharmonic hall, the 1100 seats opera house and the 300 seats chamber music hall, and several rehearsal facilities. It has been become one of the most important landmark buildings in Shanghai as well in PuDong new district. In this paper it is mainly elucidated the features of the architectural acoustics design of the 2000-seat philharmonic hall, the largest specially designed for music performance venue. It is also covered the objective acoustical measurement results and the subjective acoustics evaluation from all circles after opening.

Practice and cogitation on acoustics design of professional concert hall

Development overview on design and construction of professional concert hall since the 1990s in China is summarized in this paper. Acoustics design cases of professional concert hall completed by Zhang Kuisheng acoustical design and research studio over the past decade are described. Then four designs among those professional concert halls including the architectural characteristics and acoustical parameters are introduced. Those are Hunan musical hall, concert hall in China conservatory, Beijing, philharmonic hall in Xiamen international conference center and Yangzhou musical hall. Finally, the preferred reverberation time, plane shape, volume per seat, acoustical material and diffuser design in concert hall are discussed in detail. Those successful experience and considered suggest are put forwards for sharing.

Concert hall acoustics

Three of the world's famous concert halls, Boston's Symphony Hall, Vienna's Grosser Musikvereinssaal and Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, were built before 1901, are rectangular in shape, and are known to have good acoustics. Then came the overriding postulate of Architect Hans Sharoun, “Music in the Center”, which resulted in the Philharmonie Hall in Berlin, built in 1963. This type of hall, now called Surround Shape because the audience sits on all sides of the stage, has since been adopted elsewhere. For very large audiences, a fan-shaped hall, the Koussevitzky Tanglewood Music Shed seating 5000, was erected in 1940, underwent major acoustical changes in 1959, and has become the model for summer venues. An entirely different design is the Town Hall in Christchurch, New Zealand (opened in 1972), sometimes called the “Lateral-directed reflection sequence (LDRS) type,” which emphases lateral reflections that arrive early after the direct sound and that result in reduced energy in the reverberant sound. These types are discussed along with pertinent physical data. In addition to the effects of acoustics on the orchestral sound, factors in selecting a shape are the number of seats, the distance of the farthest seats from the stage, and who are likely to purchase tickets.

Making Connections: Some Thoughts about Milton Babbitt and His Music

- 378 Making Connections Some Thoughts about Milton Babbitt and His Music Andrew Mead The last time I saw Milton was at the premiere of Concerti for Orchestra at Boston Symphony Hall in 2004. I had picked up Bob Morris in Rochester, and we had driven into Boston for the concert. The performance had been riveting; one of America’s finest orchestras under James Levine had given the work loving attention, and the players’ affection for the composer during his curtain call was undisguised. When Bob and I caught up with Babbitt at the end of the concert, he was surrounded by admirers and seemed happy and slightly dazed by the event. I remember he was startled to see us, and said something like, “Oh, the big guys are here.” The first time I saw Milton was nearly 30 years earlier, when he was a guest composer at SUNY Stony Brook. He gave a lecture, and that evening there was a performance of Reflections. I had been casting about for graduate schools, and that was the deciding moment for me. His lecture was, no surprise, a tour-de-force, but what hooked me deep was the music. While on a single hearing I couldn’t have begun to tell you what got to me, but I felt a connection with the work that made me want to hear more from the man who had made it. It is hard for me, given my age and background, to think of Babbitt as anything but at the center of things musical. When I first went to study with him, Perspectives of New Music had just published its famous double issue, 14/15, in celebration of his 60th birthday, which was packed with articles about his music and his ideas. In my undergraduate days he had been a figure who was both raised in admiration and waved as a warning flag depending on whom you talked to, and for someone who was interested in Schoenberg, as I had been since the ninth grade, he was the writer who would probably be able to tell you the most about twelve-tone music, if you could only decode his syntax. Around New York City in those years Babbitt was a regular fixture at concerts, and seemed to know everyone. Along with “My dear boy,” his most frequently heard phrase was “One of my oldest and dearest friends.” And he knew a vast amount of music. He seemed as comfortable talking about the Reger clarinet sonatas or Franz Schmidt’s Fourth Symphony as he was about Brahms’s music, and he could speak with knowledge about Krenek’s opera Karl V almost as readily as he could about Moses und Aron. And the stories were endless: Joel Krosnick some years ago told of studying the score of Dual on the subway, preparing for its premiere, when a hand appeared over his shoulder pointing to a passage and a readily recognizable voice said, “I think that’s a misprint.” A story going around Stony Brook about the same time Babbitt visited involved a graduate student, a singer who loved contemporary opera and who had been to an open rehearsal of the first production of the complete three-act Lulu at the Met. The student had not recognized the two older gentlemen sitting behind her, but had been annoyed by their complaints throughout – “that doesn’t sound right; you can’t - 379 Making Connections hear the vibraphone” and so forth. As the story went, the singer was incensed, saying, “If they don’t like modern music they shouldn’t have been there.” The punch line was that the two proved to be Babbitt and Elliott Carter. But for all this sense of centrality, and for all the acclaim he received in later years, it is important to remember in what extraordinary ways Babbitt was an outlier, and how his outlier status helped inform his development as a composer and a thinker about music. I was reminded of this a little over a decade ago when I participated in a conference in Belgium on the origins of serialism. As we tend to tell the history on this side of the...

Making Connections: Some Thoughts about Milton Babbitt and His Music

- 378 Making Connections Some Thoughts about Milton Babbitt and His Music Andrew Mead The last time I saw Milton was at the premiere of Concerti for Orchestra at Boston Symphony Hall in 2004. I had picked up Bob Morris in Rochester, and we had driven into Boston for the concert. The performance had been riveting; one of America’s finest orchestras under James Levine had given the work loving attention, and the players’ affection for the composer during his curtain call was undisguised. When Bob and I caught up with Babbitt at the end of the concert, he was surrounded by admirers and seemed happy and slightly dazed by the event. I remember he was startled to see us, and said something like, “Oh, the big guys are here.” The first time I saw Milton was nearly 30 years earlier, when he was a guest composer at SUNY Stony Brook. He gave a lecture, and that evening there was a performance of Reflections. I had been casting about for graduate schools, and that was the deciding moment for me. His lecture was, no surprise, a tour-de-force, but what hooked me deep was the music. While on a single hearing I couldn’t have begun to tell you what got to me, but I felt a connection with the work that made me want to hear more from the man who had made it. It is hard for me, given my age and background, to think of Babbitt as anything but at the center of things musical. When I first went to study with him, Perspectives of New Music had just published its famous double issue, 14/15, in celebration of his 60th birthday, which was packed with articles about his music and his ideas. In my undergraduate days he had been a figure who was both raised in admiration and waved as a warning flag depending on whom you talked to, and for someone who was interested in Schoenberg, as I had been since the ninth grade, he was the writer who would probably be able to tell you the most about twelve-tone music, if you could only decode his syntax. Around New York City in those years Babbitt was a regular fixture at concerts, and seemed to know everyone. Along with “My dear boy,” his most frequently heard phrase was “One of my oldest and dearest friends.” And he knew a vast amount of music. He seemed as comfortable talking about the Reger clarinet sonatas or Franz Schmidt’s Fourth Symphony as he was about Brahms’s music, and he could speak with knowledge about Krenek’s opera Karl V almost as readily as he could about Moses und Aron. And the stories were endless: Joel Krosnick some years ago told of studying the score of Dual on the subway, preparing for its premiere, when a hand appeared over his shoulder pointing to a passage and a readily recognizable voice said, “I think that’s a misprint.” A story going around Stony Brook about the same time Babbitt visited involved a graduate student, a singer who loved contemporary opera and who had been to an open rehearsal of the first production of the complete three-act Lulu at the Met. The student had not recognized the two older gentlemen sitting behind her, but had been annoyed by their complaints throughout – “that doesn’t sound right; you can’t - 379 Making Connections hear the vibraphone” and so forth. As the story went, the singer was incensed, saying, “If they don’t like modern music they shouldn’t have been there.” The punch line was that the two proved to be Babbitt and Elliott Carter. But for all this sense of centrality, and for all the acclaim he received in later years, it is important to remember in what extraordinary ways Babbitt was an outlier, and how his outlier status helped inform his development as a composer and a thinker about music. I was reminded of this a little over a decade ago when I participated in a conference in Belgium on the origins of serialism. As we tend to tell the history on this side of the...

Scale Model Investigations of Diffuser Application Strategies for Acoustical Design of Performance Venues

This work investigates the effects of diffusive surfaces on concert hall acoustics using scale models with regard to hall shape and diffuser location. Two simple 1:50 scale models (shoebox and fan-shaped) were produced to measure the RT and SPL, which were decreased by wall diffusers in both hall shapes. In the shoebox hall, SPL was increased especially in the frontal area but was decreased in the rear area due to redirection of the second reflections by the opposite lateral walls, whereas SPL was decreased in both the frontal and rear area in the fan-shaped hall. For in-depth investigation of diffuser location and profile, three shoebox model halls were reproduced: a 1:50 symphony hall, a 1:25 chamber hall and a 1:25 theater. Minimal reductions in RT and LL and decreased spatial deviation in acoustical parameters were established as criteria to determine the effective diffuser location. The halves of the lateral walls closest to the stage were found to be the most effective areas for diffuser installation. Additionally, large and sparse diffuser profiles usually provided better acoustical results.

Bob Dylan in America

Sean Wilentz is the celebrated author of numerous books on the nineteenth century, including The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2006), although he also published The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008 (2008). In his other academic life he has explored popular music, including co-editing The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love, and Liberty in the American Ballad (2004) and receiving a Grammy Award nomination for the liner notes for the album The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall (2004). In Bob Dylan in America he has drawn together seemingly all of his interests and knowledge to explore the life and meaning of one of the most influential musicians over the last half-century. Wilentz contributes significantly to an understanding of his life and music, particularly since the 1960s, and is particularly fascinating with his eclectic reach and knowledge, while adding his own personal memories and anecdotes. As he concludes, Dylan took traditional folk music, the blues, rock and roll, country and western, black gospel, Tin Pan Alley, Tex-Mex borderlands music, Irish outlaw ballads, and more and bent them to his own poetic muse… . His imagination and his voice blasted open by Beat aesthetics, Dylan then pushed his own reinventions of folk music into realms that were every bit as mysterious and mythic as the old traditional music, but in a pop sensibility of his own time that shocked the folk purists. (p. 334).

Hearing Spaces: Architecture and Acoustic Experience in Modernist German Literature

Hearing Spaces: Architecture and Acoustic Experience in Modernist German Literature Kata Gellen (bio) Well before the great nineteenth-century scientist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) published On the Sensations of Tone (1860), a groundbreaking work on the physical and physiological basis of musical effects, acousticians had proven that the perception of sound requires a medium.1 Whether conceived as particles or waves, sound is material, and thus must be borne by a physical element, such as air or water. Helmholtz radicalized this point in the opening pages of his work: since a stimulus causes particles of air (Lufttheilchen) to vibrate, and those vibrations produce a sensation in our ears (a musical tone or noise), the individual particles of air are themselves what we call sound.2 The medium is literally the message.3 The study of physical acoustics, which would later come to include architectural acoustics, deals with the external space in which acts of hearing take place, as opposed to physiological acoustics, which is concerned more intimately with the ear and the nerve sensations it receives, and psychological acoustics, which examines the mental process of transforming an auditory sensation into an image or concept. The medium connects the vibrating body and the ear, and the mind transforms these auditory sensations (Gehörempfindungen) into perceptions (Vorstellungen). Consequently, physical and physiological acoustics must be attentive to the setting in which sounds are produced and perceived, since this space gives form to the medium. To ignore the space of hearing is to ignore the sounds themselves, since they are not only conditioned by, but consist in the space in which they are heard. The process of generating sounds [End Page 799] involves the subtle alteration of spatial composition; these transformations are what we perceive when we hear. Such slight changes to spatial configuration are invisible and usually intangible—though certain loud and deep sounds, such as a bass line, can generate palpable vibrations in the whole body—but they are sensible to the ear.4 At a limit, audition could be defined as the perception of otherwise insensible transformations of space. On the Sensations of Tone was essential to scientific and musical research on sense perception, not least because it was one of the earliest treatises on sound and space. Before the mid-1800s, there were of course splendid examples of acoustically successful buildings (churches, theaters, opera houses), but few theories to explain why certain structures had “good sound” while others did not.5 Helmholtz’s interest in the spatial determination of auditory perception paved the way for Harvard physics professor Wallace Sabine (1868–1919), the so-called father of architectural acoustics, whose early work was devoted to solving the difficulties of understanding speech in university auditoria. Helmholtz also broke ground by trying to establish the scientific principles behind possibly the most abstract form of art, music. In this too he must be considered a precursor to Sabine, who designed Boston’s celebrated Symphony Hall, which opened in 1900. This was the first building designed according to acoustical laws and with the help of mathematical formulas for such phenomena as reverberation and the transmission of sound through walls (SM, 4, 13–57). If for Sabine the shape, size, and material of building were of paramount concern, for Helmholtz it was above all human physiology that determined auditory processes. Together, their work can be understood to stand for a thorough reimagining of the relationship between sound and space—both bodily and architectural—in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Helmholtz’s work on acoustics immediately preceded the invention of numerous electro-acoustic devices, such as the loudspeaker (Siemens, 1874), the telephone (Bell, 1876) and the phonograph (Edison, 1877), and Sabine’s work coincided with the rise of radio broadcasting (c. 1920) and the invention of sound film (mid-1920s), not to mention the widespread use of the devices invented at the end of the previous century. This convergence of theoretical and practical developments in the realm of acoustics made their work all the more resonant. People were experiencing sound in radically new ways at a time when the scientific, musical, and architectural discourses of sound were redefining the way it was conceived...

Manfred Robert Schroeder

Manfred Robert Schroeder

Southern Syncopated Orchestra: The Roster

In this section appear basic biographies for all musicians known to have worked with the Southern Syncopated Orchestra in Europe, although without repeating information on major figures which may easily be recovered from standard reference sources on jazz or African-American music. In many cases these biographies are extremely sparse, and in a few cases nothing is known of the musicians' origins and career beyond their involvement in the The length of the biographies does not reflect either the relative or absolute importance of the performers, but the amount of information available and whether it has previously been available in an accessible format. As a general rule, personal relationships are mentioned only when relevant to professional activities or when marriages were contracted or children born while the artist was in Europe. It must be emphasized that engagements listed are those at which the artist's presence can be demonstrated from contemporary sources. It will be evident from the main text that for many engagements only the names of principals are known. Wherever the words of SSO appear they should be construed as confirmed as member of SSO. The most important sources and record series used in the compilation of this data are listed in the list of record series consulted, which appears at the end of this article. Otherwise sources are noted only when they are not obvious public records series or contemporary newspapers and/or reliability is in doubt or sources are in conflict. Allen, David Cornelius. Banjoist, vocalist. Nationality unknown. Member of for five weeks. Dismissed in Glasgow, January 1920. Archer, Frederick (real name: Akinlawon Olumuyiwa). Vocalist. Nigerian. Reportedly a former medical student at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London. Member of in Glasgow, September/October 1921. Baker, George N. Vocalist. Born Louisville, Kentucky, August 16, 1875. Came to Europe in September, 1908 as an actor. Registered as a U.S. national at the consulate in Edinburgh, March 21, 1915. Wrote music and lyrics for and performed in 1916 touring show Dark Town Jingles. Described himself as a music-hall artiste when he registered for the draft in London in 1918. Member of in London at Philharmonic Hall, 1919; Kingsway Hall, 1920. Bates, Frank (Allan Fitzgerald). Vocalist. Born St. Michael, Barbados, July 14, 1889, according to his apparent birth certificate, or November 19, 1892, according to his U.K. Seamen's Identity Certificate. Served as able seaman in the British Merchant Marine. Gave his profession as actor in July 1919. Member of in Glasgow, September/October 1921. Died in Rowan disaster, October 9, 1921. Married Fanny Vivian, London, December 31, 1918; living descendants in Great Britain. Battle Ace. Drummer. Recalled as working with at London Coliseum, December 1919. Not securely identified. Benny Peyton was by his own testimony the drummer on this engagement. Drummer Carl Kenny, formerly of Jim Europe's band, was nicknamed Battle Axe, but there is nothing to connect him with this engagement or to suggest he was in Britain at this time. Bechet, Sidney (often Sydney in contemporary sources). Clarinetist and soprano saxophonist. Born New Orleans, Louisiana, May 14, 1896, according to a 1917 draft registration signed by a second party, but May 14, 1897, according to his baptismal certificate, his 1918 draft registration, which bears his own signature, and his passport application of May 13, 1919. By his own account played with the New York Syncopated Orchestra in New York City in 1919. Recruited for Louis Mitchell's abortive trip to Paris. Went to England with Carmania party. Played with in London June to December 1919. From December 31, 1919 until September 1, 1922, member of Benny Peyton's Jazz Kings, with interruptions, including an engagement in Belgium with (Louis) Mitchell's Jazz Kings in June 1920. …

Chronology of The Southern Syncopated Orchestra: 1919-1922

12 Jun 19 First party arr. Liverpool from Philadelphia on American Line's SS Northland [Board of Trade, Passenger Lists, Inwards, 1878-1960. National Archives Ref. BT26/654]. 14 Jun 19 Second party arr. Liverpool from New York City on Cunard's SS Carmania [Board of Trade, Passenger Lists, Inwards, 1878-1960. National Archives Ref. BT26/654]. 29 Jun 19 Third party arr. Liverpool from New York City on White Star's SS Lapland [Board of Trade, Passenger Lists, Inwards, 1878-1960. National Archives Ref: BT26/654]. 4 Jul 19 Opened at Philharmonic Hall, Great Portland Street, London [Matters Musical, Referee, July 6, 1919, 4]. Initially twice daily at 2:45 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Report made to HMV Committee that SSO not suitable for recording (information from Brian Rust from EMI filing). 3 Aug 19 Free concert at People's Palace, Mile End Road, London at 3:00 p.m. [Negro Musicians, East End Concert To-Morrow, [London] Daily Herald, August 2, 1919, 5; Ragtimes By Real Darkies, Daily Herald, August 4, 1919, 3]. 8 Aug 19 Performed at a dance at the Albert Rooms, London, in honor of distinguished African visitors to London. President of Liberia was amongst those attending [Hamnett 1984, 117-118; Hooker, 1986, 129; courtesy Val Wilmer]. 9 Aug 19 Afternoon private party for members of the Royal Household at Buckingham Palace, London [King's Garden Party To His Times [of London], August 11, 1919, 13; King And His Servants, Royal Entertainment, [London] Daily Telegraph, August 11, 2919, 8]. It appears that the full orchestra appeared and that some of the singers also performed with Will Marion Cook as accompanist. A Nigger Jazz Band [sic] performed in the amphitheatre formed by the bed of the drained Palace lake. personnel consisted of: William [sic] Briggs, comet; William [sic] Forrester, trombone; Sidney Bechet, clarinet; Lawrence Morris, bandoline; Robert Young, drums. 4 Sep 19 Arr. at Southampton of Charles and Martha Gilmore, William Bums, and Frank Dennie from New York City on White Star's SS Lapland [Board Of Trade, Passenger Lists, Inwards, 1878-1960. National Archives Ref: BT26/665]. mid-Sep 19 Small band derived from the orchestra began working for the Portman Dances at the Portman Rooms, Baker Street, London, as Portman Syncopated Orchestra [1920 L No. 175, Affidavit 99; London Amusement Guide, October 1919, 34; Dancing Times, October 1919, 33]. This twelve-piece group was led by Frank Withers [Norris Smith, Dear Old Lunnon, Chicago Defender, January 3, 1920, 7]4 Oct 19 Last day for which Philharmonic Hall matinees are advertised as daily [Westminster Gazette]. 6 Oct 19 Philharmonic Hall matinees, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday only [Westminster Gazette]. 14 Oct 19 Arr. at Southampton from New York City on White Star's SS Lapland of E. E. Thompson, George Smith, and Frank Tate [Board of Trade, Passenger Lists, Inwards, 1878-1960. National Archives Ref: BT26/665]. 20 Oct 19 Began series of matinees at Prince of Wales Theatre, London on Mondays and Thursdays at 2:45 [advertisement, [London] Evening News, October 20, 1919]. Philharmonic Hall matinees now on Wednesdays and Fridays [advertisement, Daily Express, October 20, 1919]. 22 Oct 29 Last advertisement for Will Marion Cook as director [Daily Telegraph[. He was released on October 24, 1929 [Chancery Division 1920 L No. 542, Affidavit 304] and returned to the U.S.A. from Le Havre on November 23, 2929. by Nov 19 Philharmonic Hall matinees now on Wednesdays and Saturdays [advertisements, Sunday Times, November 9, 2929; London Amusement Guide, i/7, November 1919; London Attractions, November 12, 1919]. 11 Nov 29 Victory Ball No. 2, Royal Albert Hall, London, on behalf of the Central Council of the Infant Welfare Work. SSO played for dancing [Brilliant Victory Ball, [London] Daily Graphic, November 12, 1919, 6; The Victory Ball, Dancing Times, December 1929, 213]. …

Southern Rockers

Southern Rockers Joshua Guthman (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution It is impossible to overlook the shame of the Stars and Bars, but what about the sound of the music itself? There lies glory. Lynyrd Skynyrd in concert, New Brockton, Alabama, 2008, courtesy of Jayuzi, under the Creative Commons Share-Alike License. [End Page 141] Let’s be honest: Southern rock is a critically despised genre, a redneck sound draped in the Confederate flag and fueled by an oh-so-’70s mix of Jack Daniels and Quaaludes. But the genre’s critics have it only partly right. It is impossible to overlook the shame of the Stars and Bars, but what about the sound of the music itself? There lies glory—especially if you turn it up real loud. 10. The Allman Brothers Band The genre’s progenitors? I wouldn’t be so quick to place the Allmans at the moment of creation. But it is true they exhibit all that is good and bad about southern rock—the heady mix of blues, rock, country, and soul, on the one hand, and the never-ending on-stage “jam” burdening that other hand like so much deadweight. 9. Lynyrd Skynyrd Only Elvis’s music lies buried beneath more heaps of cultural symbolism. But that’s what you get for playing in front of the Rebel flag and sparring with Neil Young over the meaning of southern manhood. 8. Lucinda Williams Oh, she can sing it sweet, but, Lord, have you heard Williams when she plugs in? A voice like a branding iron. 7. Uncle Tupelo The Rust Belt meets the Bible Belt. The post-industrial descendants of the white southern migrants who found themselves exiled to the steel mills and automobile factories of the Midwest. 6. Gram Parsons The pre-eminent country-rocker, a radiant songwriter, and a man who died far too young. Did you know that his corpse was stolen and set alight in the deserts of California before it could be flown back to New Orleans for burial? Talk about southern gothic. 5. The Sir Douglas Quintet They hailed from Texas and summoned the sounds of Mexico. But, please, don’t call ’em Tex-Mex. Makes their music sound like a bowl of bad chili when in fact they were serving up the sweetest stew of borderland soul imaginable. 4. Drive-By Truckers Latter-day chroniclers of what they call “the duality of the southern thing.” [End Page 142] Click for larger view View full resolution She can sing it sweet, but, Lord, have you heard her when she plugs in? A voice like a branding iron. Lucinda Williams, at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, England, 2008, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Share-Alike License. 3. The Band “They’re from Canada!” you scream. “The South ’tis but a state of mind,” I reply. 2. Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (a.k.a. The Swampers) Unseen but always heard. The house band at fame Studios before opening up their own shop in 1969, these guys laid down the beats behind (take a deep breath) Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Etta James, Bob Seger, Willie Nelson, the Staple Singers, Traffic, the Oak Ridge Boys, Paul Simon, and Rod Stewart, among others. 1. Elvis Presley The original southern rocker. The great white whale of American culture, in Greil Marcus’s words: a musician, an idea, a force, a living metaphor of the sins and virtues of the South. [End Page 143] Joshua Guthman Joshua Guthman is the music editor of Southern Cultures and an assistant professor of history at Berea College, where he teaches American cultural and religious history. He is writing a book about Primitive Baptists and the evangelical self in antebellum America. Copyright © 2009 Center for the Study of the American South

Acoustical design of Shenzhen Concert Hall, Shenzhen China

The Shenzhen Concert Hall complex opened in Shenzhen, China on October 12, 2007. The complex contains the Symphony Hall with 1,800 audience seats, the Theater Studio with 400 - 580 seats and some rooms for rehearsing. The Symphony Hall has a vineyard configuration with a steep audience block arrangement, called "canyon terrace". At the widest point of the audience seating, the room spans 45m, is 60m long and has a ceiling height of 25 m. The polycarbonate ensemble reflector panels are suspended at the height of approx.15m above the stage. The acoustical design and characteristics of the Concert Hall are reported.

From backward integration to number-theoretic diffusors

As a student of physics at Göttingen I was interested in the statistics of electromagnetic resonances in metallic cavities when Erwin Meyer offered me a scholarship in concert-hall acoustics. So we compromised and my thesis eventually appeared under the double heading "The statistical parameters of the frequency responses of large enclosures. Experiments with electromagnetic waves".-After moving to Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, I continued to explore, with Heiner Kuttruft, frequency responses in concert halls by digital simulation, confirming my earlier theory that, above a critical frequency, these responses are just "noise" in the frequency domain. Later I dabbled in anti-feedback circuits and explored, with Ben Logan, artificial reverberation that spawned a minor industry-now dubbed sound scapes (first realized by John Chowning) and virtual reality. Then came the work (with Gerhard Sessler, Jim West, Bishnu Atal and Carol Bird) on Philharmonic Hall in New York, which lead to a new method of measuring reverberation time ("backward" integration) and new surface structures, based on number theory, for better sound diffusion. (The idea came to me during a talk by André Weil on "Gauss Sums" during the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Gauss' birth.)

Qualitative Standard for Symphonic Concert Environment

All acousticians strive to obtain a symphonic concert environment that will be well received by musicians, professional music critics and the general public. Currently, this environment corresponds to the reflective energy measurements found in what might be designated as the rectangular European or American Concert Hall of the late nineteenth century, such as the Grosser Musikvereinssaal in Vienna and Symphony Hall in Boston Massachusetts. It is well known that these measurements can be correlated to subjective musical judgments and that halls incorporating these measurements have been universally designated as having excellent environments for symphonic concerts. But how did these specific reflections become an acoustical standard. This paper presents a theory of how the rectangular European and American style concert hall became an acoustical standard at the beginning of the twentieth century and poses the question as to whether this standard is still applicable in the twenty first century?

An Interview with John Guess

An Interview with John Guess Charles Henry Rowell Click for larger view View full resolution Photo of John F. Guess [End Page 414] This interview was recorded on November 20, 2007, in Houston, Texas. ROWELL: John, I want to start with your career, since you graduated from Johns Hopkins University. Your career is complex; it is packed. When you graduated from Hopkins, you didn't elect to do one simple thing; you did many things. You have managed a mayoral campaign. You have been an international banker in Brazil. You have been a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch. You have been a principal in a South Africa-based firm. You have been a partner in an award winning consulting company. You are on many cultural boards and head the consulting group in a family-owned firm. You have done much. But to begin this interview I want to focus on just one element or one facet of your career; I want to focus on what you're doing now: film production, filmmaking. I want to begin with the film you are creating now: your film on Thelonious Monk. GUESS: And Jason Moran. ROWELL: Oh, yes, and Jason Moran. In fact, your working title is "Moran and Monk." What brought you to this subject as a film? GUESS: Houstonians are notorious for having an image complex thinking that they need to be something or somewhere else, but the reality is that you can see the world here. It is an international city. Anything from immigration to music and arts I figured you could interpret from here. And well, Jason Moran is from here. And since I was targeting people from Houston who had something to say to people nationally and internationally, Jason Moran was an easy choice. I knew Jason's people and I approached Jason. Originally, we were looking at doing a film titled Jason Moran in Paris. But when Jason came to Houston for his brother Tai's wedding in early 2007, I was able to sit down with him. I went into that meeting having looked at his schedule and I said, "Hey, what's this thing with Monk that you're doing at Duke University? Maybe we can do something just about that and that way we're not doing just a concert film and we're not having to travel around to Amsterdam and Paris to do the film but we can do it right here." And he looked at me and said, "That's a good film, because it's part of a year-long honor of Monk celebrating what would have been his ninetieth birthday" and so we agreed to do it. The film is a fascinating story about recently found music from Monk's Town Hall concert in 1959, and about how that music was recreated and then performed by Jason in San Francisco, and then reinterpreted as the piece In My Mind at a world premier at Duke University in late October, 2007. The [End Page 415] work was commissioned by Duke University, by the San Francisco Jazz Festival, by the Chicago Symphony Hall, and by the Washington Society for the Performing Arts. I like to tell my Houston stories. It is sort of like my little inside joke, that when you see Moran & Monk, it's not really Houston. But it's a story about a boy from Houston. ROWELL: When did this meeting take place? GUESS: Early 2007. ROWELL: At the Jason Moran concert here in Houston last year? GUESS: No, this is after the concert. You're talking about the concert based on Adrian Piper, where Jason did an interpretation for the Walker Museum and he did that concert here. So this was maybe in February of 2007. We had been able to begin to start the film in July, in San Francisco, at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. We met with Monk's son, drummer T. S. Monk, who played in the recreation concert there; we met with Robert D. G. Kelly, who is the most renowned authority on Monk, and of course Jason. Randall Kline, the San Francisco Jazz Festival Executive Director, and Joshua Redman who was the...

Macbeth (review)

Reviewed by: Macbeth Thomas Price Campbell Macbeth Presented by Arizona Opera in co-production with Seattle Opera at Phoenix Symphony Hall, Phoenix, Arizona. October12-14, 2006. Directed by Bernard Uzan. Set and costume design by Robert Israel. Conducted by Joel Revzen. Lighting design by Christopher Akerlind. Lighting recreated by Connie Yun. Flight direction by Brent Gibbs. With Lori Phillips (Lady Macbeth), Louis Otey (Macbeth), Peter Volpe (Banquo), Jianyi Zhang (Macduff ), Jamie Flora (Malcolm), Randy Fenton (Duncan), Anthony Constantino (Fleance), Kara Harris (Lady-in-waiting), Andrew Gray (Doctor), Juan Aguirre (Servant and Murderer), Christopher Herrera (Apparition 1), Will Smith (Apparition 2), James Mendola (Apparition 3), and others (Chorus). As Ayanna Thompson's "Program Notes" explain, "Macbeth is uniquely suited to adaptation because it investigates the very line between the timely and the timeless." Thus the combination of ultra-slick, modern staging and nineteenth-century military costuming felt eerily appropriate as Arizona Opera's production of Verdi's Macbeth asked the audience to process a modern adaptation of a nineteenth-century, Italian, operatic adaptation of an early-seventeenth-century English play. The adaptation into opera of Shakespeare's dark Scottish tragedy provided Verdi a [End Page 81] mechanism to work out a number of interpretive issues for his audience. In turn, Arizona Opera's altered version of Verdi's libretto pointed up Professor Thompson's claim that Macbeth remains capable of speaking across time and in the immediate present. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Macbeth, presented by Arizona Opera in co-production with Seattle Opera. Photograph courtesy of Arizona Opera. At numerous moments when the audience might have imagined a plot strand bound to its historical context, the opera also offered a more contemporary issue for consideration. Timeless in the Macbeth legend is the examination of the politics of ambition. Arizona Opera cut whole lines and entire characters from the libretto.. The effect was to force the audience's attention on the dilemma facing Macbeth by the end of the first act. Common to most adaptations of Macbeth, the company pitted Macbeth's urge to climb socially without the accordant mens rea against Lady Macbeth's almost insatiable urge to climb at any cost. Not tied to eleventh-century Scotland, seventeenth-century England, or nineteenth-century Italy, the transhistorically human misgivings about vaulting ambition became even more intense when rendered in operatic performance. Minus characters like Shakespeare's equivocating Porter [End Page 82] or his memory-keeping Ross and Old Man, the stripped-down cast of characters in the opera was left to lay out the critical conflict, and it was only through the operatic adaptation that they were able to do so. The medium itself became a kind of bodiless character. Without the extensive psychological exposition to which audiences are typically privy in theatrical performance, characters were still able to convey the emotional intensity connected to the proposed murder of the king by way of musical repetition. Foreshortening both Shakespeare's play and Verdi's libretto, much of the story's argumentative dialogue that paints the inversion of Macbeth's "manly readiness" and Lady Macbeth's "womanly defense" was condensed into the repeated lines sung "ensemble" that occupied a huge portion of the recitative in the first act: Macbeth I shall hear Duncan's holy virtues Thunder vengeance at me like angels of wrath. Lady Macbeth You are bold, Macbeth, but have no daring. Binding this central exchange, Lady Macbeth's short, leading questions and Macbeth's almost forced answers, bore striking resemblance to the Greek dramatic deployment of stichomythia. Shakespeare is famous for having put this poetic technique to use in moments of violent dispute, but the operatic adaptation intensified the gravity of the conflict when sung loudly and at incredible pace. This particular exchange (similar to most between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth) occurred center stage as Macbeth slowly sunk into a chair, cowering from his wife, while Lady Macbeth stood tall, and moved literally in front of Macbeth, blocking him entirely from the spotlight that illuminated her figure, making her quite literally the central actor of the scene. As both the heavily edited libretto and the stage positioning forced Lady Macbeth to the center of...