Spelunking Disney Concert Hall

My brother Tim and I went to Disney Concert Hall last night to see Gustavo Dudamel perform in his debut weekend there as Artistic Director of the LA Philharmonic. The music was great; the sound was unbelievable. They played Mahler's First Symphony, and the marriage of composition with musicianship (the two elements of musical performance that you can copyright) was every bit as fraught with power and genius as the performance Burge and I saw of Bob Dylan and his band in Seattle earlier this week.

I may try later to embad in this post an iPhone video of the accolades Dudamel received at the end of the show, accolades to which he responded by walking into the orchestra and calling out the sections and principal players who performed the piece brilliantly. I'll reserve comment on Dudamel himself, except to say that I now more nearly understand what a conductor does. A metaphor that comes to mind is of the visiting representative of a civilization from another galaxy; although his technology is far, far advanced, everything in the complex craft transporting him can be thrown into motion from a simple joystick, or the natural gestures of his organic form (the opposite of the instrument panel in a jet, or the cascading nav bars of newer versions of Microsoft Word).

But my chief purpose here is to book-end my "Hiking Disney Concert Hall" post, about an earlier traversal of the exterior of this extraordinary building. Last night, my brother Tim and I got to explore the inside!

The above is of a lecture (and small performance?) area which before we were only able to look down upon from an exterior window (see the last picture from my prior post). The rectangular panels that look darker in the picture above appear so because they are drilled full of holes; this has something to do with the acoustic performance of the space (the main performance hall has the same thing going on).

We took a tour for new subscribers before the show, and the guild told us that the HVAC system was encased in Douglas Fir. To the right is a picture of part of the system from the level of the main floor.

Below is a picture where you can see the steel inside the wood.It is an incredible building.

The only thing in Seattle that is comparable, as elegant on the outside and as hospitable, ennobling and civilized on the inside, is the downtown Seattle Public Library.

Here is a pic I tweeted last night, of Dudamel and the orchestra bowing to the back of the house at the end of the night.