Disney Hall: Beyond the Building

In the context of an ongoing discourse about issues facing arts leaders today, Calendar invited conductor-composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to write about his thoughts on the culture of Los Angeles. He chose to focus on Disney Hall, the showpiece designed by Frank Gehry as the new home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic at downtown’s Music Center.

Last November, plans for construction of Disney Hall, originally scheduled to be completed in 1997, were halted because of $50 million in projected cost overruns, delaying the start-up by as much as a year and a half. The total projected budget now stands at $260 million, and Disney Hall project managers are currently in conflict with Los Angeles County, which has already completed an underground parking structure that would be beneath the hall. County officials are concerned that plans to open the garage will be delayed along with Disney Hall, cutting off needed revenue from parking fees. An outside firm has been hired to provide an accurate cost estimate for the hall and recommendations for avoiding further cost overruns, which will be delivered in March and could call for changes in Gehry’s complex design.

Salonen argues here that the enduring issues of culture--music, in particular--should not be lost amid arguments about finances and architectural concerns.

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Disney Hall is not about steel and concrete. It is not about budgets or sociology. It needs to be stressed that a lot of the discussion about the impact of the project has been off the target in analyzing exclusively social implications. The function of the building is about music, rather than a semiotic message of architectural constructs.

Of course, music in this context is a social activity. I would like to suggest some basic, if not immediately obvious, ways in which the music-making possibilities of Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall design connect with the political and financial arguments.

A word quite often used--and misused, as well--in discussing today’s world is pluralism . To establish true pluralism in culture, which I personally find important and worth every effort, we must have freedom of choice. There is a strong emphasis on commercial culture here in Los Angeles, more than anywhere else that I know. In order to maintain freedom of choice, we need better visibility and more support for things deeper and more challenging than commercial culture, with a focus on widening our horizons rather than consumption.

The new thing about Disney Hall is the flexibility of the space, both inside and out. It will allow great variety of performances and performers. For the Los Angeles Philharmonic, this could involve our new music, chamber music and educational programs, as well as symphonic concerts both traditional and innovative.

That flexibility, with greater availability, of Disney Hall also will make it possible to bring in other performers more frequently. This means not only visiting ensembles and recitalists, but a wide range of local groups as well. The idea is to create a space with constant activity and excitement, open all day long--a meeting place for the people of L.A., a bit like the Royal Festival Hall in London.

A city of this size and importance should have a world-class orchestra and opera. We assume that Los Angeles Opera is here to stay, as is the Philharmonic. There is a very simple financial consideration to Disney Hall: It is much less expensive to operate both the opera and the orchestra in two different buildings.

It is very difficult to schedule rehearsals--particularly stage time--with both opera and orchestra using the same facilities. I have always understood this from the Philharmonic’s perspective; in preparing “Pelleas et Melisande,” I have come to appreciate the difficulties for the opera all too well. Rehearsal schedules can be awkward and inflexible, and the production costs involved in constantly putting up and taking down sets--and the shell and risers for the Philharmonic concerts virtually amount to an opera set in terms of backstage labor--can be enormous. Not infrequently this can happen several times a day, with performances or rehearsals in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion morning, afternoon and evening.

This is an artistically problematic and unusually expensive way to run an opera company and a symphony orchestra, sharing the same building. Disney Hall will make artistically and logistically complex projects possible more often for both groups, and it creates a sort of endowment for both, by making production budgets for each more cost effective.

Obviously, the Disney Hall project has other musical ramifications. Everything possible has been done to ensure it will be a splendid concert hall acoustically. As with all the great concert halls of the world, the orchestra and the audience will be together in the same room, not separated by the walls of a proscenium arch. Among the famed halls important in the acoustical research for Disney Hall are the Philarmonie in Berlin, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Suntory Hall in Tokyo, in all of which the Philharmonic has performed on tour this past year.

Many Philharmonic musicians and others, such as Simon Rattle, Pierre Boulez and Zubin Mehta, have been involved in the process. The principal acoustician is Dr. Minoru Nagata, whose other projects have included 30 concert halls, such as Suntory Hall. As far as anybody can tell from extensive tests and analyses, Disney Hall will be acoustically superb.

Further, in a modern, well-equipped environment such as Disney Hall, it would be possible to do some research in adapting classical music to new media and technologies, such as CD-ROM and virtual reality. We would be simultaneously learning and developing how classical music will exist 25 years from now.

To return to the more abstract sociological and cultural imperatives, Disney Hall has a dual purpose in terms of the image of L.A.: How the outside world sees Los Angeles, and--maybe more important--it’s about how L.A. sees itself. The costs may seem great, but the Disney Hall money buys much more than just the building, in very practical ways as well as in image and in greatly expanded cultural potentialities. It is an investment in the heart of Los Angeles, not just in geography but in the cultural pulse and lifeblood essential to any city as a unique and viable social organization.