Listeners have never shied from making acoustical judgments about the centerpiece of the $265 million Kimmel, citing a somewhat pallid orchestral sound and lack of impact. Musicians on stage said they had difficulty hearing one another.
In truth, Verizon Hall is a vast improvement over the Academy of Music, if one's abiding criterion is pure sound, as opposed to old-world ambiance or the alluring ghost memories of having heard Stokowski and Rachmaninoff amid the gilded splendor.
Verizon is still sleek, its mission acoustical efficiency. Which makes this summer's reconstruction of some critical bones in the 2,500-seat hall all the more tantalizing. The first visual clues are anything but subtle.
Two large boxy appendages, in brown tones much darker than the rest of the honey-toned interior, have appeared on either side of the stage. Weighing 7,152 pounds each and sealed with heavy sound-bouncing doors, the "reflector towers" effectively shrink a portion of the stage by about 24 feet. Despite their bulk, the towers are movable, gliding on tracks.
A stealthier change is the reconstruction of an acoustical wall behind the wooden latticework ringing the stage. The new masonry wall is bulkier than the old, and it has been reshaped from its former smooth quarter-moon curve to something more jagged and complex to bounce sound back out on stage and into the hall.
The two bits of remediation and a few others over the summer carried a combined $1.3 million price tag, and are aimed solely at improving sound - for the players on stage as well as the audience.
Based on hearing one Philadelphia Orchestra concert this season, Dawn R. Schuette, the Chicago acoustician from Threshold Acoustics leading the project, said an improvement was apparent. One major goal was to boost the orchestra's presence, and in that first concert, "the overall power of the orchestra was wonderful."
