A ‘plugged in’ problem

Not long after pianist Keith Jarrett gave the first jazz recital at Walt Disney Concert Hall in November, his sardonic comments about the hall began to reverberate in music circles.

Jarrett’s criticism -- “It was like being at the center of a big bowl, with the sound stirring around and never finding any sort of focus” -- soon reechoed as cocktail party chatter. Deborah Borda, president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn., recalls that people would sidle up to her at parties and, with barely contained relish, say: “Gee, I hear there are problems with the sound.”

But the problem -- at least in this case -- was not the sound. At issue was something that has vexed the hall since its inception: amplification. Complaints arose as early as the climactic opening gala in October, when many in attendance had trouble understanding what hosts Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones were saying into their microphones, and continued in January, when British theater director Simon McBurney read aloud from Berlioz’s letters during the Philharmonic presentation of the composer’s “Symphonie Fantastique” -- again to the confusion of numerous concertgoers.

“In Disney Hall, amplifying the sound is problematic because the hall is so vibrant,” says sound designer Mark Gray, who came to that realization during the galas when he worked on the premiere of John Adams’ “The Dharma at Big Sur,” a piece for orchestra and electric violin.

As Gray’s experience indicates, the need for enhanced sound in Disney extends beyond jazz or pop music. Some contemporary classical pieces, like Adams’, require amplification or reinforcement, as do programs, like the Berlioz concert, that involve the spoken word.

Whether creating sound designs for Adams’ 9/11 piece, “On the Transmigrations of Souls,” at the Royal Albert Hall in London or working with the Kronos Quartet in a small jazz club in Norway, Gray’s challenge, he explains, is to achieve aural clarity.

“It’s potentially a very deadly situation,” he says. The acoustics in some halls are so alive that they are “just screaming, ‘Don’t put a speaker in this room!’ ”

The science of sound

The nature of the sound in a given venue depends on its reflective, diffuse and absorptive surfaces. A reflective wall throws back sound directly, whereas sound hitting diffuse surroundings acts more like a wave hitting the shore -- its reflections scatter. Absorptive surfaces swallow reverberations.

In Disney Hall, the curves of Douglas fir are diffuse and reflective. And although that’s great for natural sound, it’s not ideal for amplified sound.

“That is something that I’m actually pleased about,” Philharmonic Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen says -- because it indicates how good the natural acoustics are. “The room is like a fine instrument that has to be treated in a very special way.”

“It’s a very, very bright-sounding hall,” says Gray, and overamplification can make the sound muddy. “One of the largest issues is to keep the sound as “acoustic” as possible.”

With contemporary classical music, mixing the sound has to be especially subtle. While a composer may want to emphasize a particular instrument, other instruments won’t need amplification because the room will do the job.

Because the mix must be so delicate, it can also be critical for a technician to hear the sound in the hall. But Gray notes that one problem at Disney has been the different arrangements for amplifying different types of music.

During jazz and world music performances, the mixing console has usually been brought into the hall, to the middle of a row in the orchestra section. But during the gala featuring the Adams premiere, Gray had to work inside the sound booth at the back of the section. His only connection to the sound was what came through a small window.

“In the booth, you lose the sense of what the audience hears,” he says. “It’s like driving under the influence of alcohol: You have no idea of the feel of the steering wheel.”

In part as a result of Gray’s experience, the mixing console is now brought into the hall for most concerts.

Onstage, meanwhile, there are different arrangements according to the type of music being performed. For jazz and world music, players and singers perform on a flat stage. For orchestral works, the musicians sit on risers.

Because of the stage design, when the risers are in use, running cables under the stage can be problematic. That may not affect the sound, but “a job that should take 15 minutes takes three hours,” Gray says.

“Let’s say they had to perform Steve Reich or [Karlheinz] Stockhausen or other music that is going to entail amplification in the orchestra setting -- it’s not as easy as it should be. You’re driving on the freeway, and there are speed bumps every hundred yards.”

“We knew there were going to be some issues,” Borda says. “It’s been a learning experience. We’ve had 90% improvement since our very first concert here, but we’ll get that other 10% over the next few months.”

Neither Music Center nor Philharmonic officials are willing to disclose the price of the Disney sound apparatus. They say the figure would include unrelated hardware, wiring and the backstage PA system. But others estimate that the speakers and amplifiers alone cost upward of $250,000 -- not out of line for a complex state-of-the-art system.

The VerTec 4887 speakers were developed by Northridge-based JBL Professional for hockey arenas and outdoor stadiums. At Disney, the system includes 29 boxes of these speakers, known as line arrays.

Fred Vogler, the sound designer responsible for the new Hollywood Bowl, was brought in at midseason to help remedy the amplification problems.

The main speakers originally hung from the ceiling on both sides of the stage. But having artists center stage and sound coming from the sides created a visceral disconnect, Vogler says. So one change since the season began has been gathering the speakers in a cluster -- a sort of honeycombed egg -- hanging from the center of the ceiling.

There, the curved line-array speakers, aligned to various rows of seats, transmit slices of sound on top of one another for uniform audio coverage. Vogler envisions fabric eventually covering part of the cluster.

On a recent afternoon, Vogler moved through the different areas of the hall, constantly adjusting the volume and the timbre of the various speakers as he communicated by walkie-talkie with staffers at the mixing console. It’s both physics and guesswork, he says of his job; a sound check in an empty hall is an approximation. Since humans are made of large amounts of water, they absorb sound, so “when you have a house filled with water bags, it sounds different.”

On this particular afternoon, Portuguese fado singer Mariza was rehearsing with her musicians -- who would be amplified for her performance that night -- as well as with members of the Philharmonic -- who wouldn’t. And Vogler had stacked assorted speakers on stage as an experiment.

“You have to approach each show with an open mind and lots of tools,” he says. “It’s like medicine: educated guesses.”

Vogler has also been working with Yasuhisa Toyota, who created the hall’s acoustical design.

“Sound from an electrical sound system includes distortion more or less, and the natural reverberant acoustics unfortunately amplifies this distortion,” Toyota says by e-mail from Japan. “A huge part of our process has been learning how to control that distortion.”

For one thing, massive burgundy velour drapes are now hung at the back of the hall during amplified concerts to absorb reverberations. Vogler plans to eventually install an automated, more aesthetically pleasing design, possibly by the hall’s architect, Frank Gehry.

As a sound designer, Vogler has to find the balance between how far he wants to project sound and fidelity.

“Even the purists in the classical world like music amplified,” he says. Music that you can feel physically is exciting. “People love it loud.”

“Things are really loud these days,” agrees Salonen, who, when he goes to rock concerts, brings ear plugs. If volume is the only objective, he adds, Disney “is the wrong place.”

“We have to -- not compete -- but complement nature,” Vogler says. “You want to bring some intimacy to a larger space.”

Balance is key

Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, played Disney Hall in March. “For a hall of its size, it’s very warm and intimate,” he says by e-mail from London. “The state-of-the-art sound system gave the music a natural timbre, creating clarity of sound for the musicians on stage.”

In his experience, the hall “has a remarkable tonal balance affording the brass instruments a natural sound and allowing for the drums to remain powerful but not overpower the music.”

Another factor complicating the amplification question, however, is that traveling artists often bring their own sound crews, who are typically used to venues such as clubs or outdoor stages.

“That’s a problem,” Borda says. “What they do is say ‘More,’ and they push the sound up as high as they can. They push the levers to the very top, and we’re there saying, ‘No, no. Less is more, pull it back.’ It’s a whole struggle.”

“Disney Hall has such a refined sound, it should be looked at in a totally different way,” Gray says. His advice to traveling sound engineers? “Don’t amplify but reinforce.”

But telling traveling sound crews how to do their jobs may be as tricky as performing a Rachmaninoff concerto. In the case of the Jarrett concert, requests that the pianist rehearse in the hall well in advance of the show were largely ignored.

“Keith is known to be very....He’s a great artist [but] he can be very temperamental,” Borda says. “He was willing -- basically -- to rehearse about a half-hour.”

And that simply wasn’t enough, she says, adding that his comments confused the issue “because he also said something about acoustics. It had nothing to do with acoustics. It had to do with amplification.”

“I don’t think Disney hall will ever be a perfect venue for amplified music,” Salonen says. But “with reasonably simple measures we can create a perfectly functional environment.”

“I know they’re looking for the perfect sound,” singer Mariza’s manager, Joao Pedro Ruela, says by cellphone a few days after her concert, adding, “If they’re not there already, they’re very close.” He hands the phone to Mariza, who says that onstage, surrounded by the orchestra, she was able to pick out individual instruments.

“I was a little worried,” she says, referring to the mix of amplified and unamplified sound. “But I didn’t feel a difference.”

What she did feel was “carino -- sweet love.” The audience gave her three standing ovations.

“I was very happy,” she says. “I was feeling at home.”