MUSIC & DANCE NEWS : Seattle Says It Has the Money for New Hall

The Seattle Symphony will move into a new, $109-million, 2,500-seat downtown auditorium, to be called Benaroya Hall, in the fall of 1998. This will be the first move in 33 years for the 92-year-old orchestra, led for the past decade by Music Director Gerard Schwarz, and resident since 1962 in the Opera House built for the World’s Fair of that year.

After initial private, city, county and state commitments to the building project, there remains $37 million to be raised or guaranteed before the groundbreaking scheduled for April 2.

“We are feeling great,” says former Angeleno Deborah Rutter Card, executive director of the Seattle Symphony. Card says that, given the promises and prospective donations of the Seattle community, prospects look good for raising the entire amount by that date.

“We are particularly gratified by the response of the corporate community--which can be very resistant to large donations of this kind,” the former executive director of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra said by phone from Seattle.

At this point, Card says, she has had no turn-downs, though she declines to list the corporate donors until a formal list is released early in 1996.

The private fundraising campaign was launched by a $15-million grant from the family of Jack and Becky Benaroya, to name the hall; the Boeing Corp. also quickly pledged $3 million. Designing the building is the Seattle-based firm of Loschky, Marquardt & Nesholm, which describes the structure as capturing “the essence of Seattle: a cultural centerpiece that engages its urban surroundings and celebrates . . . with extensive garden spaces, views of water and mountains, and a dramatic treatment of light and color.”

Appointed two years ago, Cyril Harris of New York City is the acoustical consultant, a function he has filled for more than 100 auditoriums around the world.

The 2,500-seat hall was actually downsized from one seating 2,700, Card says, because the larger room “was an acoustical risk.” The final seating is not exact, she said, but may vary up or down by about 50 seats.

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LIGETI’S 75TH: Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti turns 75 on May 28, 1998, and to celebrate the event, Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen will be leading the London Philharmonia in a two-year cycle of Ligeti performances and recording sessions around the world starting in the fall of 1996. One of the programs will be a newly revised, fully staged version of the opera “Le Grand Macabre,” directed by Peter Sellars, at the Salzburg Festival in the summer of 1997 and in Paris in 1998.

In all, eight different programs are scheduled for 14 cities, among them Tokyo, Amsterdam, Madrid, Chicago and San Francisco (the only two scheduled stops in the United States). The Ligeti tour could touch down in Los Angeles, too, said L.A. Philharmonic Managing Director Ernest Fleischmann, “but the tour schedule brings them here during a week when we [the L.A. Philharmonic] are presenting another orchestra. . . . Perhaps we can have both.”