Rising Out of the Rubble at Cal State Long Beach

The term “Bringing the house down” took on a literal turn July 2, when the roof of the Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall at Cal State Long Beach inexplicably collapsed.

Two Steinway grand pianos were crushed, and perhaps destroyed. That was the bad news.

The good news is that the collapse, “though terrible, was not a tragedy. No one was hurt,” said Donald Para, chairman of the CSLB music department.

Daniel Recital Hall--named after the late music administrator, conductor and composer who had taught at Long Beach City College before coming to the university--was the handiwork of Long Beach architects Hugh Gibbs and Donald Gibbs, and was built in 1982; the contractor was Shirley Brothers Inc. of Pasadena. The hall held 210 permanent seats and was the major performing site for musical events at the university.

Speaking for the administration last Monday, Jon Regnier, associate vice president for physical planning at CSLB, described the initial rebuilding process, called “forensic demolition.”

“We started today to take a photographic survey of the interior of the hall, from inside the building, and from a bucket lowered from a crane.

“Once we complete that survey, we can begin to ascertain how best to remove safely the materials inside. Our plan is to reassemble (the roof) in the parking lot adjacent to the hall. Through various tests, we think we will be able to determine what caused (the collapse).”

Regnier said he and his associates are “three weeks away from pinpointing the problems and beginning to rebuild.” He said exactly which course would be taken--repairing or rebuilding--has not been decided at this time.

In the meantime, says Para, university business goes on.

“That hall had a variety of uses, though not so many during the summer.” Five of six sections of a music course for general university students have been reassigned classrooms, and the sixth was canceled. When the sections resume in the fall, university orchestra rehearsals will be moved to a smaller hall--one of the two rehearsal rooms adjacent to the collapsed building, and still closed at this time.

The 250 concerts given in the hall annually will be reassigned to one of several possible temporary venues, Para says, the first being 450-seat University Theater on the South Campus. A nearby little theater--many years ago used as the choral room on what was then called the upper campus--will hold twice-weekly departmental recitals.

,on

“Larger events will be given in one of two Long Beach churches which have agreed to help us out--First Congregational and Los Altos Methodist,” Para said. Para said he was especially happy to have found a venue for the visiting Bay Area Women’s Philharmonic, which will play in Long Beach next March 14, conducted by JoAnn Falletta. And Michael Carson,, head of opera production at CSLB, says he is negotiating for a series of November performances of Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutte” aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach Harbor.

Within a few days, the department head believes, the fate of the two Steinways will become clearer.

“We don’t know if they are repairable, or if they will have to be replaced. We do know that both pianos are now on the floor of the hall, four feet below where they were before the roof collapsed. The legs are broken, and there seems to be a lot of weight on the instruments.

“Even if they can be repaired, that could be a long process. At the very least we will have to rent one concert-class piano. And, since the State of California is self-insuring, we may have to find the funds to buy new instruments.??”

Para says that no one has ascertained exactly what happened to cause the roof to collapse.

“I’ve talked to many people, some of whom seem to know a lot about it. But they all say, it’s still a mystery.”

PEOPLE: Conductor Roderick Brydon, scheduled to make his U.S. debut with Los Angeles Music Center Opera in June, 1991, will now appear in September of this year, conducting Mozart’s “Idomeneo” in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Christof Perick, the announced conductor, has withdrawn “so that he can undergo a course of therapy to correct a chronic back problem,” according to a spokesman for LAMCO. Brydon, music director of the Bern (Switzerland) Opera, will still conduct Britten’s “Turn of the Screw” later in the season. Concurrent with the announcement from LAMCO comes word from San Francisco Opera that Perick, scheduled to lead “Wozzeck” in the fall season there, will be replaced by the Viennese-born conductor Friedemann Layer.