Concerts Wed Architecture, Muisic

While the stately Coronado residence at 1156 Isabella Ave. was designed by Irving Gill, San Diego’s preeminent turn-of-the-century architect, its history is more colorful than the sedate descriptions found in architectural guidebooks. Legend has it that during the heyday of Prohibition, the notorious Al Capone frequented the mansion, which was built in 1910 for Percival Thompson, transplanted brother of former Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson.

Sunday afternoon, however, the genteel side of the building’s history will be celebrated with a chamber music concert, the opening program of this season’s Silver Gate Concert series. An arm of the Save Our Heritage Organisation, this series of chamber music performed in historic sites began last year with a program at another Gill landmark, the Granger Music Hall in National City. Spanish physician Dr. Juan Suros and his wife, Kathleen, now own the Thompson residence, the building’s fourth owners.

Flutist Lynn Schubert, one of the series’ organizers and a performer on the opening concert, noted that she and co-director Betty McManus are not just antiquarians searching out old buildings in which to perform.

“We have been looking for buildings that are of historic or architectural interest--they do not necessarily have to be real old. In fact, I would like to find some striking modern buildings for future seasons,” Schubert said.

This season’s other locations include the main lobby of the downtown San Diego Trust & Savings Bank, William Templeton Johnson’s 1928 Romanesque Revival edifice; the Mississippi Room of the post-World War II Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon Boulevard, and the chapel at La Jolla’s Bishop’s School, designed by Carleton Winslow.

Schubert stated that getting cooperation from the buildings’ owners has been surprisingly easy. “We’ve had an almost unanimously positive response from people we’ve asked,” she said.

“When we went to the bank, nobody had ever asked them if they could have a concert in their lobby--it was a real novelty to them,” McManus said. “They were enthusiastic, even though it meant moving all the heavy furnishings out of the lobby to hold a concert. But they are proud of their building and very history-conscious.”

Along with Frazee Paints and Wallcoverings, another local business, the bank agreed to underwrite the March 6 lobby concert.

Although some musical programs on the series are tailored to their buildings--Sunday’s fare will be devoted to composers who wrote during the first few decades of this century, when Gill was at the height of his designing powers--others are not so clearly thematic. For the bank lobby program, Schubert signed the London-based Baroque consort Trio Sonnerie, which is composed of violinist Monica Huggett, gambist Sarah Cunningham and harpsichordist Mitzi Meyerson. The lobby’s 32-foot ceiling, marble-clad pillars and marble wainscoting should, however, provide an ideal acoustical setting for the ensemble’s Baroque repertory.

While the Lafayette Hotel is seldom included in preservationists’ catalogues of venerable San Diego buildings, Schubert and McManus were intrigued by its role in the city’s social history.

“We knew that the Mississippi Room was a popular night spot in the late 1940s, the tail end of the Big Band era, and that Florence Chadwick trained in the hotel’s pool. We heard the hotel was being restored, so one afternoon we swung around to take a look at it,” McManus explained. On April 10, the Gennaro Trio, an ensemble of San Diego musicians Illana Mysior, Ronald Goldman, and Mary Lindblom, will perform Beethoven and Tchaikovsky in the Mississippi Room.

On May 10 in the Bishop’s School Chapel, the Early Music Ensemble of San Diego will give the series’ final concert, a program devoted to spring madrigals by Renaissance composers.

One of the challenges of presenting concerts in buildings designed for other purposes is finding rooms with adequate seating. The Suros home in Coronado seats only 75, and McManus indicated that all of the seats had been sold a week prior to the performance. Fortunately, McManus and her crew can set up 250 chairs in the bank lobby, so next month’s Baroque program is the likely venue for those who did not make early reservations.