Acoustician Sounding Out New Ideas for Disney Hall : Music: Minoru Nagata, the acoustician responsible for the sound in the planned Disney Hall in Los Angeles, says acoustics is 70% science and 30% art, and the 30% is what makes a first-class hall.

Some acousticians say designing concert halls is like making a musical instrument--They won’t know how it sounds until it’s completed. Others take a purely scientific approach, relying on mathematical equations and analysis.

But Minoru Nagata, the gray-haired Japanese acoustician responsible for how the music will sound in Walt Disney Hall, is a man with a levelheaded approach: “Acoustics is like seasoning--too much can ruin the food. You want just enough.”

Disney Hall, which will be across 1st Street from the Music Center between Grand Avenue and Hope Street, is Nagata’s first major overseas project in his 40-year career. He has been working closely with architect Frank Gehry and says the partnership is working well: “Gehry is very straightforward and has shown a great deal of understanding towards what we are trying to achieve acoustically,” Nataga said Thursday.

Based on Nagata’s new instructions, Gehry is working toward a boat-shaped concert hall he calls his “Noah’s Ark.” Gehry said he has devised angled seating banks floating free of the walls anchored by four mast-like columns under billowing ceiling panels. Each corner of this ship-in-a-box design will have a skylight that floods the edges with sunshine.

Nagata indicated the stage will be toward one end of the hall and that this design was one of about 20 concepts that he thought were workable.

The addition of a 40-story luxury hotel to the Disney Hall complex isn’t his concern, Nagata said, as he is responsible only for the architectural acoustics of the concert hall. He said the idea of the hotel has always been under consideration.

Acclaimed for his acoustical design for Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Nagata said he can make better use of the higher ceiling in the 2,500-seat Disney Hall but that the undulating ceiling is Gehry’s concept to go with the ark idea.

Built in 1986 in the heart of Tokyo, Suntory Hall has a reputation for its excellent acoustics, described by the late Herbert von Karajan as “a beautiful jewelry box.” The 2,000-seat hall was modeled on the new Philharmonic in West Berlin--the concert hall the Disney Hall planning committee admires most for its acoustic as well as intimate atmosphere.

The committee was finally convinced that Nagata was its man when he met Gehry in Berlin in December and immediately struck a rapport. “A good working relationship was the committee’s major concern,” Nagata said. “I liked Mr. Gehry immediately for his frankness. He is not arrogant like most Japanese architects.”

Over at Gehry’s office in Santa Monica, Bobbie Weiser, Gehry’s project architect for Disney Hall, said: “Nagata is very open, very respectful of what Frank’s trying to do, and vice versa. There’s a mutual respect that allows them to talk about issues without the feeling that one is destroying the other’s design. The ideas of the acoustics and the design evolve together.”

Nagata and his assistant, Yasuhisa Toyota, come to Los Angeles every few weeks for periods ranging from a few days to several weeks. Generally, they hold working meetings with five or six people, followed by informational meetings with the entire Disney Hall committee.

The rest of the time, it is the fax machine, rather than the telephone, which is the next best thing to being there. “Working with someone in Tokyo,” said Weiser, “you don’t have the day-to-day of, ‘Here’s the drawing.’ You don’t have the ability to discuss it. If you have a quick question--Does the ceiling shape work? Is this back wall articulated?--you can get the answer within a day (using the fax). Sometimes, getting a quick answer makes all the difference: It keeps up the momentum.”

“I have in mind a space where ordinary people as well as connoisseurs can enjoy concerts,” Nagata said.

Capacity, shape and materials for the interior are the main determinants of acoustics, said Toyota in Nagata’s small office above an electric shop on the west side of Tokyo. Magnitude, direction and quality of sound reflections off the ceiling, floor and side walls are the factors acousticians consider when designing concert halls.

“Psychological factors are just as important,” said Toyota. “Intimacy is what we are looking for.”

Joints, finish around doors or even placing of fiberglass sound absorbing materials can easily affect acoustics. “The surface finish of the hall’s interior can easily affect acoustics,” Toyota said. “Mr. Gehry said half-jokingly that the ideal is to have the entire building constructed in Japan by Japanese workers and shipped to the States.” Nagata intends to keep his designs simple to avoid technical problems.

Nagata established his own company 18 years ago. He has designed more than 60 halls and theaters. Suntory Hall is the culmination of all these years of experience.

In Suntory Hall, most of the interior--even seat backs--is wood. Wood is often a preferred material, partly because of its sound-reflective qualities, but more importantly for its appearance.

The 64-year-old Nagata is a pioneer of architectural acoustics. He headed the acoustics and audio engineering team at NHK, Japan’s state-owned and most powerful broadcasting corporation, and was involved in construction of nearly all the major multipurpose theaters and concert halls during his country’s postwar economic development.

Nagata feels that the major pitfall for European acousticians is their fixation with theories and new concepts. “You can rely on technical data and theories only up to a point. You have to listen with your own ears as you go along . . . Acoustics is 70% science and 30% art, and it is that 30% that makes a really first-class concert hall.”

A keen music lover, Nagata attends concerts in Tokyo sometimes every day of the week. A reticent man, like many technicians, he speaks in short sentences. His musical taste is rather selective, preferring Mozart and Haydn to Mahler or Tchaikovsky, and he names Sergiu Celibidache of the Munich Philharmonic and Neville Marriner of the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields as his favorite conductors.

“I suspect the Japanese taste in acoustics might be slightly different from Americans’,” he said, knowing that the Disney Hall committee has a preference for warmth rather than brilliance--which is the characteristic of Suntory Hall. “I will have to bear that in mind too.”

BACKGROUND

Because so many variable affect acoustics, numerous modern halls have turned out muddled: Avery Fisher in New York (which had a radical acoustic makeover), Toronto’s Roy Thomson, Royal Festival Hall in London (electronically corrected), San Francisco’s Davies. The venerable Carnegie Hall underwent a $60-million revamping in 1986, but this summer was modified in an attempt to smooth a harshness of sound.

Libby Slate contributed to this article. Hara is a Tokyo free-lance writer.