Last night my pal Brenda and I took a chance on an evening concert in the Winter Garden at Ground Zero. The attraction for us, mostly, was the performance by the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra of portions of a work-in-progress about legendary city planner, Robert Moses. But, for me, another draw was the unusual venue for the concert.
I had never been before but the Winter Garden is essentially a cathedral to corporate power -- an enormous marble sarcophagus of a lobby with a ceiling height that rivals Grand Central Station's main terminal, except here done in a late 20th C. style, complete with windows everywhere and about a dozen 50' palm trees soaring up toward a sky that will forever remain beyond glass.
The problem here is -- somewhat predictably -- accoustics. You've got miles of marble and glass and a temporary stage erected at one end of the atrium. Putting some accoustic fabric panels behind the stage does nothing to project the sound up and out and into the ears of the audience. So what was the chosen solution last night?
About 20-30 mics scattered throughout the orchestra. The result?
Well, let's just say, it was pretty darn odd. What happens, of course, is you end up hearing the strings only through the speakers even though you're seated less than 100 feet from the stage. So they sound tinny, as any instrument being artificially piped in does. To conjure up the tonality I'm describing, just try to recall the sound of the invisible pit orchestra in any of the Disney musicals on Broadway. It's oddly other-worldly. But then, of course, the brass can project out to us no matter where they are. In fact, Charles Ives understood this best. He even composed some pieces to be performed outdoors that depended on the ability of the trumpet to cut through anything, even the sound of a passing locomotive. I mention Ives because one of his Three Places in New England suite was performed on the bill and the effect was more bizarre than even Ives could ever have imagined.
So you hear the strings and the flute and piccolo and reeds through the speakers while the brass comes at you directly, serving as a constant reminder of what real un-amplified music sounds like, reminding you of just how tinny the amplified sound is by comparison.
Especially bizarre was hearing Aaron Copeland's Quiet City, which calls for a trumpet solo and an English horn solo. The trumpet was hitting us direct. The English horn, only through the speakers.
It seems as though the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra has a lot of talent among its ranks. It would be wonderful to hear them play live. For real. In a space that could do them justice.
