August 13, 2007
Russell Johnson
It was with great sadness that we at the Kimmel Center learned of Russell Johnson’s passing last week. Russell was the brains, or more correctly, the ears behind Artec Consultants, the acousticians whose job it was to ensure that the new concert halls on the corner of Broad and Spruce sounded as good as the building looked.
Various obituaries have described Russell as a perfectionist, cantankerous, a battler of architects, rumpled, gruff and, perhaps most importantly, an artist. All observations are accurate. He was a complex man who dealt in a world that very few understand but one in which there is never a shortage of opinions. From the moment a new concert hall is contemplated musicians, critics and audiences begin debating its acoustics. It has been my experience that an extremely small minority within those groups have the combination of enough experience, enough technical knowledge and enough understanding of the tuning process to express a complete opinion.
The “acoustical history” of the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall has been the topic of many articles that have included proclamations of high praise to expressions of mediocrity both of which were usually accompanied by misunderstandings, included bloated opinions based on single hearings, and relied a huge degree of subjective criteria of what a great concert hall should sound like and even debate about which ”great” halls we should be trying to emulate (or not).
Not knowing Philadelphia well, I took a taxi to my first day on the job as the Center’s Vice President of Programming in February 2002 (about 6 weeks after the center opened its doors). I asked the driver to take me to the Kimmel Center and his response was, “You mean that new place with the terrible acoustics?” I asked him what concerts he had been to in order to arrive at such an opinion and his reply was that he had not been to the hall yet, but he had heard it was awful. At least he was honest! I wonder how many others formed opinions that way.
During my first meeting with Russell, he gave me a brief explanation of the movable ceilings and walls and spoke about the process he envisioned. I asked him how long he thought it would take until we (the hall, the musicians, the acousticians and the audience) would arrive at a place of comfort or satisfaction with the sound. His response was that it usually takes two years. Pity that many in the press and others were so quick to rush to judgment. Judging Russell’s hall in December 2001 is akin to judging a painting after the outlines and shapes have been drawn but none of the shading and dimension is completed.
Over the course of the next two years hours of work took place including listening sessions of the Philadelphia and other orchestras, recitals, and amplified jazz & pop concerts. The group of listeners included brass, woodwind and string players from the orchestra, artistic planners from the orchestra and the Kimmel Center, conductors and some of Philadelphia’s finest jazz artists. We sat in all sections of the hall. Lengthy discussions were held after each event, adjustments were made to the moveable parts of the hall, seating of the orchestra was altered, and risers were reconfigured and floors re-coated. Opinions were sought from audience members, visiting artists, soloists etc. Slowly and carefully we made adjustments to the hall until we, collectively, came to different acoustical settings that were optimal for orchestral concerts, for classical recitals, for lightly amplified jazz concerts and for pop concerts.
Those with keen ears heard some of the differences immediately. At other times, major adjustments were made and no one, on stage or off, professional or layman, heard the difference. The result was a marked improvement in sound quality across all genres of presentations. Returning artists were quick to remark on the changes. One conductor said to me backstage, “I liked this hall very much when it opened, but it seems to have blossomed.” A pianist told me that he preferred Verizon Hall to Carnegie Hall because he felt he was able to get his sound more “out in front of the orchestra” here and, thus, had more freedom of expression. Several jazz artists have proclaimed Verizon Hall to be their favorite in the entire country.
Verizon Hall will never be the perfect hall for everyone. How could it? So much of what moves us is personal and subjective – where one person wishes for more strength from the 1st violins others need more at the bottom from the basses. An acoustic for one genre of music may be totally inappropriate for another. How much of the sound quality is acoustics and how much is the musician?
For me, the guy who has booked over 250 concerts in the hall, I can simply state that Verizon Hall has the most versatile acoustic of any hall in which I have worked or heard music. From subtle leid during a Kiri Te Kanawa vocal recital to 120 decibels booming from on stage monitors during The Roots, the hall can take anything that is thrown at it. It took a couple of years for all of us to learn how to drive this top-of-the-line sports car but, now that we are cruising, what a fabulous ride Russell Johnson has allowed us to take.
—Mervon Mehta, Vice President, Programming and Education
Comments
I had the great privilege of working for Russ Johnson in Vancouver during the acoustic testing of the "Vancouver Civic Auditorium" aka "Queen Elizabeth Theatre" in the Summer of 1959. I was just out of high school and thoutht I knew it all...
From the first day, I was impressed with his direct view of technical problems. He made it very clear from the start that this Theatre was NOT a concert hall, as most of the people in Vancouver thought... Merely a good venue for theatre...
Russ returned to Vancouver many years later and provided us with one of his finest works: The Chan Centre...
Words fail me. At one moment Russ was expounding about the virtues Von Karajan's style of conductin of Wagner's operas and, in the next, explaining the definition of a "VU Meter" to a teenager who didn't know it all after all.
I know I am late with this, but Russ, you are missed!
Doug Docherty