Music Hall: a delicate balance
What to preserve? What to enhance?
The other major limitation Music Hall presents for the Opera is the inability for them to expand their season beyond the current available summer window. The other tenants occupy 35 weeks and dominate the fall, winter and spring months. There are currently no acceptable, available alternative venues. Other area halls of similar size were not designed for this type of performance. The Aronoff’s Procter & Gamble Hall (c. 2700 seats) was designed to host amplified performance. The acoustics are purposefully less-reverberant and, therefore, unsuited to opera or orchestral performances. Taft Auditorium’s acoustics (c. 2500 seats) are simply not good enough for this type of performance. At some point soon, the city must consider a new, smaller venue to supplement Music Hall.
May Festival
ROLE: The primary reason Music Hall was constructed in the 1870s was to house the then biennial choral festivals during which hundreds of amateur singers came together and performed with professional instrumentalists in grandly-scaled events. May Festival uses Music Hall during the month of May each year. They share office space with the CSO.
ISSUES: Although less so than with other Music Hall tenants, the same size and capacity issues apply to May Festival: repertoire limitations in terms of scale and popularity, resulting lack of variety, possibility of stagnation… The venue dictates the scope and nature of concerts and, as a result, costs remain high.
As with the Opera, May Festival needs better rehearsal spaces. The large rehearsal hall has lousy acoustics, cramps such a large chorus, and there are limited options for the rehearsing of solos and smaller ensembles.
Cincinnati Arts Association
ROLE: Responsible for managing and maintaining the physical aspects of the Music Hall complex, as well as scheduling use of space.
ISSUES: The building is old, massive and outdated in many ways; plumbing, electrical, HVAC and structural problems abound. Restrooms are too few and inadequate in size. There is not enough room for ticket sales, concessions, coat check, gift shop…
CAA is challenged with meeting the myriad needs of these various performing organizations in their demands for space, personnel, technology and maintenance while holding together a huge, yet fragile infrastructure.
Posted: September 29th, 2009 under Arts & Culture Blog.
Comment from gibson60
Time October 2, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Express deserves applause for Thom Mariner’s timely column on the future of Music Hall. It’s a well-organized and easy-to-understand rundown of an extremely complicated and important issue. The column needs to be read by anyone who cares about Greater Cincinnati – arts fan or not – and I hope that happens.
Many of us remember in the 1960s, when conservative Cincinnati confronted a high-stakes, far-reaching choice about the need for a new sports stadium on the riverfront. Since then, it seems that every generation has had to face the same fundamental question: do we want to remain a “big league” city? Do we, and can we, try to keep pace with “large market” cities when they raise the ante with bigger and better arenas, stadiums and performance venues?
Factor in our aesthetic, civic and historic responsibility to maintain Music Hall – our “secular cathedral,” as Thom so aptly put it – and things get REALLY complicated!
Today’s harsh economy underscores the fact that there are plenty of worthwhile ways to spend our money. But the discussion has to start somewhere and must include Music Hall.