Benaroya: A Year Of Applause -- New Concert Hall Keeps Winning Praise - And More Fans

Music lovers far and wide breathed a sigh of relief on Benaroya Hall's opening night last Sept. 12, when it was apparent that the new hall was an immediate hit and an acoustical success. After more than 15 years of effort and a cost that topped $118 million, the hall was finally open and running, with nearly unanimous praise among the concertgoers, the orchestra members and critics from three continents who assembled for the opening.

And that's where the real challenge started. If we built it, would they come? Specifically, would the tradition-loving classical music audiences follow the orchestra and other resident ensembles from the Opera House, the University of Washington and other venues downtown to Benaroya? And once there, would they come back for subsequent seasons, or would the music crowd shrug its collective shoulders, saying "been there, done that," and fail to renew their subscriptions?

Other members of the music community had additional worries: Planners wondered whether a fatal flaw in design or other problems in usability would emerge. Ticket buyers worried about whether they'd like their seats in the new hall; you couldn't exactly stroll in and inspect the various locations, not while the hall was a hard-hat construction zone. Potential concertgoers wondered whether the third-tier seats would induce vertigo, if the sightlines were poor, or if there was enough room for wheelchairs.

And Seattle Symphony administrators bit a lot of fingernails over the question of whether running the hall and managing the orchestra's inaugural season in it would tax the orchestra's resources so severely that the 1998-99 ledgers would be written in red ink.

What's the score?

In the concluding weeks of the first Benaroya season, it's time to take stock. Fortunately, the hall's stock appears to be soaring. There were few sour notes sounded in a season that has left most users singing the praises of both the 2,500-seat Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium mainstage and the 540-seat Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall.

Some lingering doubts remain about amplified music in the mainstage - partly because visiting pops and jazz artists insist on bringing their own sound systems. Some patrons are never going to be happy with a few of the less-expensive, sightline-impaired seats in the upper reaches of the side boxes.

A few groups renting the Recital Hall have been surprised by the mandatory extra costs involved, over and above hall rental. For example, the Northwest Chamber Orchestra's opening concerts last October with pianist Jon Kimura Parker cost $850 for mandatory stage labor and $135.20 for ushers (in addition to unpaid NWCO volunteers); renting the piano was another $300, and piano tuning was $130. Another factor is that 20 percent of any boutique sales (i.e., T-shirts and CDs) goes to Benaroya Hall.

No new hall can please everyone. But, as Seattle Symphony executive director Deborah Card puts it, "We haven't received a lot of complaints. We've gotten a lot of love letters."

Northwest Chamber Orchestra's general manager, Louise Kincaid, calls moving into the recital hall "a great experience for us. Our cost of doing business has gone up, and we accept that. But we have a wonderful relationship with the hall management, and a dramatic increase in ticket sales. We'll balance our budget.

"Moving from a dirty classroom to one of the finest halls in the country has been a dream come true."

A crescendo in attendance

The figures for inaugural-season attendance are impressive by any standard. According to figures collected by Patricia Isacson Sabee, who manages the hall as director of Benaroya Hall Music Center, during the Sept. 12-20 inaugural celebration alone, an estimated 47,952 patrons visited the hall for concerts, free noontime programs and free public tours, including 30,000 at the free "Day of Music."

Beyond that opening celebration period, an additional 611,472 visited Benaroya Hall during the first season (extrapolated through the end of this month). The symphony itself played for 260,000 patrons, with an additional 65,000 coming to the orchestra's community concerts.

All told, there were 340 events - concerts, parties, annual meetings and plenty more - in all areas of the hall (including the Grand Lobby) for 1998-99, producing more than $685,000 in earned income. Attendance in the hall's Boeing Company Gallery, which is open to the public 265 days a year for dining, coffee service, boutique sales and ticket purchases, was estimated at 132,500 during the nine-month season, and free public tours brought in another estimated 4,320. The grand attendance total, including the September inaugural, was 659,472 - well over the projected 500,000.

"Some orchestras have experienced a tough time moving into new halls, especially halls located downtown," reflects Card.

"We knew that Portland had had a very tough time with their relocation, and that others, such as Dallas, had capitalized on the move. Which way would we go? Fortunately, we went up."

The symphony itself sold an average of 92 percent of the tickets to every event, and when the extra tickets allotted to artists, staff and press are included, the hall has been running at very close to capacity for symphony events.

Included in the general attendance totals is a big step upward in annual attendance for such primary users as the Seattle Men's Chorus and the Northwest Chamber Orchestra. The latter reports an "absolutely fabulous attendance," according to Kincaid, who added that ticket sales have almost doubled in the new facility. Enough concerts were oversold, in fact, that the orchestra now is considering adding a third performance to the usual pair of Saturday/Sunday concerts in the main subscription season.

"We worried about the second year, whether there would be a falloff in ticket sales," Kincaid says, "but sales are even stronger for 1999-2000. We love being at Benaroya."

Sharp notes and flat notes

One of the biggest hits of the first Benaroya season has been the Visiting Orchestras series, which brought the legendary St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to the new hall. Ironically, the series didn't sell at all well at first, but that changed quickly when word of St. Petersburg's spectacular reputation got out.

Next summer will bring the completion of the pipe organ at Benaroya's mainstage, and a new wave of organ concerts - including the convention of the American Guild of Organists, whose members will be expertly rattling the pipes on new and old instruments throughout the region.

Not everything was a hit this season. Card and the board have reluctantly canceled two fine series, the Young Artists and Creative Impulse, each with three 1998-99 concerts that didn't sell well enough to justify continuance into 1999-2000, Card said.

Since the Washington State Arts Commission has withdrawn its funding for the orchestra's annual Arts in Education program, which brings music to 5,000 Seattle schoolchildren, Card and her staffers are devoting more resources to education; a new learning center in the hall's first floor is expected to open next year, and there will be new concert series for kids and even the "tiny tots" in the pre-primary range.

There also have been complaints from audiences about the sound systems used in pops, jazz and other programs that require amplification. Don't blame the hall, Card warns.

"Benaroya Hall is designed as an acoustic hall," she explains.

"We quickly learned that it was not as easy to work with amplified sound. It has taken us a while to adapt to this; we've spent a lot of time and brought in a lot of experts. For each show, whether it is Colin Powell speaking or Burt Bacharach playing, we customize what we need, with speakers in certain locations, including the balconies and even the organ loft."

According to Isacson Sabee, a lot of problems arise from the fact that most contracts with artists stipulate that the performers have control over the sound systems (often bringing in their own, which may or may not work well in Benaroya). Audiences who can't hear - or are hearing way too much sound - often blame the hall for the artist's own sound system.

In the case of the recent Glenn Miller Orchestra concert on the Pops series, one concertgoer wrote to this writer about unpleasantly loud sound. But the sound mix for that concert, Isacson Sabee explained, was controlled by a Glenn Miller keyboard player located on the stage. The player was unable to hear what people in the house heard.

Card said the hall administrators are "working on changing the contracts with the artists, because we know the hall. They don't."

Overtures for next season

"Ticket sales for next season are ahead of this year's sales," says Isacson Sabee, who notes that the 1998-99 subscription totals had already jumped to 31,000 subscribers over the previous season's 21,000.

"People are not just renewing; they're adding other series."

Not only ticket buyers, but also groups renting the hall, are enthusiastic about Benaroya.

"All the other users are re-booking - such as Boston University, which held auditions here, and the Seattle Chamber Music Festival's `Winter Interlude,' and such groups as Orchestra Seattle/Seattle Chamber Singers, Seattle Chamber Players, Northwest Girlchoir, Seattle Classical Guitar Society and City Cantabile Choir."

New bookings, too, are coming in from such ensembles as the Seattle Baroque Orchestra and the Seattle Repertory Jazz Ensemble, whose tickets sold so fast that the jazz ensemble immediately booked another date.

Several simultaneous functions in the various Benaroya venues - such as a "Messiah" rehearsal and a simultaneous party in the Grand Lobby - have proved that it can work to schedule more than one thing at once (though it can get very confusing at the ticket office when there are two big events in the mainstage and the recital hall, or when there's a loud event upstairs in the recital-hall lobby).

What does Benaroya Hall really need right now? More money. The hall is not quite paid for. Card says they have "about $2 million to go" on the $118 million building, whose fund-raising costs and financing (interest paid on loans to cover late-arriving pledges, such as the long-delayed final installment of the Washington State "Building for the Arts" pledge) have pushed the actual cost to around $130 million.

The other part of the orchestra's capital campaign - building a $30 million endowment fund - still has $10 million to go. That money is essential, because a larger endowment will provide annual income the orchestra will need desperately in the coming years. The average endowment for the top 20 orchestras in the country is now $65 million; even attaining the $30 million goal will leave the Seattle Symphony far from an ideal financial setup.

"When you look at the orchestras across the country, in Pittsburgh or in Boston, for instance, you see that they built their endowment funds during their golden age," Card observes.

"This is Seattle's golden age. Now is the time. We can't count on the Northwest economy to continue at this incredible rate of prosperity that we're seeing right now."

The orchestra, and the city, nonetheless are both exceedingly lucky that there are no fundamental problems with the hall. Fears about being downtown, about the cost and availability of parking, have not kept patrons away. The hall site, once an ugly dirt hillside strewn with fast-food wrappers, now is in bloom with a handsome Garden of Remembrance and a building that is busy day and night.

The rewards are great. Ten days ago, as mesmerized audiences at a symphony concert filed out for intermission after violin diva Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg gave her most subtle Seattle performance ever, music lovers mulled over what a gift it is to hear virtually every bow-hair in contact with those magical strings.

Amidst all the excited chatter stood the hall's founding donor, Jack Benaroya, who isn't a big chatterer. But the smile on his face said it all.