From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
That Percussionist Is the Local Train
NEW YORK--Judy and Arthur Zankel Hall, which opened here recently on the lower level of Carnegie Hall, is a stylish and comfortable chamber venue with a difference--one where a quintet is as likely to play jazz as Brahms, and the repertoire ranges from ancient folk musics to the latest premieres. Designed by Polshek Partnership Architects in collaboration with Jaffe Holden Acoustics, Zankel restores Carnegie's original configuration as three halls under one roof and provides a more suitably scaled home for Carnegie's prestigious chamber series. Unfortunately, that function is compromised by the rumble of nearby subways.
This despite Zankel's $72 million price tag, the reported cooperation of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), and the input of acoustical engineering consultants, who measured the subway vibrations before and after construction. Not surprisingly, given Zankel's subterranean location nine feet from the trains, the noise is more disruptive than the low vibrations heard occasionally in Carnegie's prestigious main hall.
"There's still work to be done," acknowledges Christopher Jaffe, whose firm's many successes include Bass Hall in Fort Worth and the tricky renovation of Severance Hall in Cleveland. Robert Harth, Carnegie's forward-looking executive and artistic director, says that a third consultant has been engaged "to make recommendations . . . about further possible mitigation measures." In the meantime, anything under a fortissimo can turn into the MTA concerto.
The problem is doubly frustrating because Zankel's intermediate size and clear acoustics favor music in the quiet to moderately loud dynamic ranges, and that's when the noise is most audible, especially on the auditorium's right side. It was particularly irksome during a serene hymn by the medieval composer Machaut, sung by three sopranos from Paul Hillier's Theatre of Voices during the opening weekend of the inaugural festival. It was less noticeable during "Mania," an edgy, impassioned concerto for cello and 14 instrumentalists by conductor/composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, performed on opening night by the Zankel Band, graduates of Carnegie's admirable professional training program. (The work was conducted by John Adams, Carnegie's composer-in-residence; Anssi Karttunen was the fluent soloist.) But it was never an issue later that evening, when the virtuosic pianist Omar Sosa and his talented Octet played surprisingly inane Afro-Cuban jazz; the volume level drowned it out. How all this affects future programming remains to be seen.
The auditorium inside Zankel (pronounced Zan-KELL) is named in memory of the late Judith Arron, who envisioned it during her tragically shortened tenure as Carnegie's executive director. A sampling of four programs there revealed the sound to be good for voice, amplified or natural, and for mixed instrumental ensembles like the Zankel Band. In the tricky balancing act between reverberation (decay time), clarity and warmth, clarity has won. Still, the Emerson Quartet's recent involving concert showed sufficient resonance for the hall's size.
In appearance, programming, audio-visual technology and flexibility (540 to 644 seats, depending on which of six stage configurations is used), Zankel is a valuable 21st-century complement to Carnegie's 2,800-seat Stern Auditorium and 268-seat Weill Recital Hall. Its golden sycamore walls and tranquil green upholstery lend a Zen-like presence to the auditorium, heightened by the use of interlocking wooden slats. On the lower side walls, these slats conceal diffusers, which disperse the sound much as ornamental cherubs do in Baroque halls. The flat parquet wood panels above them onstage, with their alternating vertical and horizontal elements in contrasting wood tones, evoke the "rhythms" of a Mondrian painting.
Other admirable design features include vertical frosted-glass sconces that subtly light the auditorium during concerts; paper-towel dispensers conveniently located between every three sinks in the women's room; and glazed walls the color of parchment on the oval "ship" encasing the rectangular auditorium. The oval, in turn, sits inside an outer rectangle that lines up with Stern Auditorium. But the biggest achievement in this basement venue is the sense of wanton spaciousness in the 30-foot high auditorium, made possible by the excavation of 6,300 cubic yards of bedrock.
With dropdown projection screens, digital cameras, movable, multicolored lighting and the ability to create "surround sound," the hall provides numerous possibilities for Carnegie's educational projects and may inspire composers as well. Already, 30 members of the American Composers Orchestra will perform the premiere next February of Michael Gordon's "Gotham," a multimedia piece that will explore Zankel's nascent promise.
Zankel is also bound to change the rental-hall scene in Manhattan. It might draw chamber ensembles from the dry and cavernous Alice Tully Hall at an already beleaguered Lincoln Center. But Zankel's basic rental fee of $4,500, plus reportedly pricey stagehands and other support services, may prove costly compared with the 450-seat Merkin Hall ($1,550) or the 800-seat auditorium at the New York Ethical Culture Society ($3,500), a non-union house now under renovation. It depends on how much musicians are willing to pay for that Carnegie cachet.
In 1891, when newspapers hailed the opening of Andrew Carnegie's "tone-temple," the building included an intermediate venue on its lower level. But over the years, this was bastardized to suit successive tenants, who used it as a theater, art-film house and commercial cinema. Work on Zankel Hall began in 1999, two years after the cinema's lease expired.
Now the hall is finished and the 82-concert inaugural season is under way. So far, 15 of the 24 opening festival events have sold out and 87% of the 725 available "Z" passes--flexible subscriptions--have been purchased. Some concerts are being offered without intermission at less conventional starting times in hopes of attracting the younger, casual crowd that presenters covet these days.
Zankel is indeed a hall for the future, one that proclaims the importance of multiple music traditions. But until the subway noise is eliminated, this bold new venue will not achieve its shining potential.
