The only thing that keeps the hall from providing full 360-degree seating is the fact that one of the most visually striking musical instruments you’ll ever lay your eyes on is positioned directly behind the stage. As you first enter the hall, your eyes are drawn to a massive outcropping of wooden pipes that jut up towards the ceiling in a manner than I can best describe as a wooden version of the ice pillars in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Designed in collaboration by Frank Gehry and master organ builder Manual J. Rosales, the pipe organ in the Disney Concert Hall was given to the County of Los Angeles as a gift from Toyota Motor Corporation. It features 6,134 pipes that range in size from a small pencil to a telephone pole. This number is just an estimate, as it has proven virtually impossible to count the actual number of pipes that are in the organ. It has taken over 2,000 man hours just to voice and tune this organ, which was built by a group of internationally renowned organ builders, Glatter-Gotz Orgelbau of Germany and Rosales Organ Builders in Los Angeles. Use of fine quality woods is a theme that you find throughout the theater and the pipe organ is no exception. The exterior pipes are made of Douglas fir, while the interior pipes are made of Norwegian pine. Real ebony is used for the black keys on the keyboard of the organ, while famous Disney employee Dumbo the flying elephant will be happy to know that simulated ivory was used for the white keys. To ensure that the sound of the organ would property blend with the performers, the wood façade pipes are actual pipes consisting of the Violine and bassoon basses.
Moving back to look at the acoustics of the hall, you’ll note that the bottoms of the chairs were specifically created to have fabric on the bottom panels rather than metal. Oftentimes at concert halls or movie theaters, the room will sound dramatically different when empty vs. when full. Take a careful listen to even your car stereo system with several passengers compared to when you are cruising the highway alone. To allow the performers to practice in front of a simulated “full house,” the fabric-lined bottom panels of the chairs sound almost the same as if concertgoers were sitting in the furniture. Metal is obviously a very reflective surface and practicing in front of an empty hall with 2,000 metal panels bouncing sound back at the performers is going to sound dramatically different when the hall fills up that evening so the Walt Disney Concert Hall smartly does not have any metal surfaces in it. In your own home theater system, you can use this same strategy by covering any exposed windows while you position your speakers. If you have leather seats that tend to be a little less absorptive than cloth, you might toss a decorative blanket or pillow over them when they are not being used, so that as you turn up your room, you are simulating what it will sound like when you have several friends over and are going to show off your system.
Moving back to the stage, the floor of the stage is made out of beautiful cedar wood and features four concentric circles that are set on risers, which can be raised or lowered with lifts under the stage. This allows a great deal of flexibility in performances as different sections of the orchestra can be placed higher than others so they can be heard more easily. Since the majority of the performances at the Walt Disney Concert Hall are acoustic, this is a crafty way of making sure the sound comes from the stage in a way that everyone can hear evenly and also allows for better views of the performance.
Lighting is another important feature of any concert hall and at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the options are almost limitless. Unlike many concert halls, the Walt Disney Concert Hall has soaring glass windows on each end of the main auditorium, including a massive 35-foot-tall window that faces Grand Avenue on the east side of the building. For matinee performances, thick curtains can be moved in front of the windows to control the amount of light in the environment. These drapes can be closed slightly to allow some ambient light to mix with the stage lighting or can be closed so completely that you’d swear it was the middle of the night. The curved wooden panels that make up the ceiling of the hall have a large number of holes, which allow for items like microphones and additional lights to be attached to the metal frame at the top. Along each side of the hall, there are also house lights attached to the side wooden panels that can be controlled by the lighting engineer in the back of the auditorium.
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Moving back to look at the acoustics of the hall, you’ll note that the bottoms of the chairs were specifically created to have fabric on the bottom panels rather than metal. Oftentimes at concert halls or movie theaters, the room will sound dramatically different when empty vs. when full. Take a careful listen to even your car stereo system with several passengers compared to when you are cruising the highway alone. To allow the performers to practice in front of a simulated “full house,” the fabric-lined bottom panels of the chairs sound almost the same as if concertgoers were sitting in the furniture. Metal is obviously a very reflective surface and practicing in front of an empty hall with 2,000 metal panels bouncing sound back at the performers is going to sound dramatically different when the hall fills up that evening so the Walt Disney Concert Hall smartly does not have any metal surfaces in it. In your own home theater system, you can use this same strategy by covering any exposed windows while you position your speakers. If you have leather seats that tend to be a little less absorptive than cloth, you might toss a decorative blanket or pillow over them when they are not being used, so that as you turn up your room, you are simulating what it will sound like when you have several friends over and are going to show off your system.
Lighting is another important feature of any concert hall and at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the options are almost limitless. Unlike many concert halls, the Walt Disney Concert Hall has soaring glass windows on each end of the main auditorium, including a massive 35-foot-tall window that faces Grand Avenue on the east side of the building. For matinee performances, thick curtains can be moved in front of the windows to control the amount of light in the environment. These drapes can be closed slightly to allow some ambient light to mix with the stage lighting or can be closed so completely that you’d swear it was the middle of the night. The curved wooden panels that make up the ceiling of the hall have a large number of holes, which allow for items like microphones and additional lights to be attached to the metal frame at the top. Along each side of the hall, there are also house lights attached to the side wooden panels that can be controlled by the lighting engineer in the back of the auditorium.