The Sound of Music

But the truly inspiring work was accomplished by Kirkegaard Associates, a Chicago- based acoustical consultancy. Their results in the three inner spaces -- the 1700 seat Concert Hall, 200 seat Studio Theatre and 440 seat Music and Theatre Hall -- are incredible.

The day I visited The Ferguson Center, there was a morning performance of the Virginia Symphony taking place in the Music and Theatre Hall while on the other end of the complex, a hurly-burly crew of around thirty were loading in Will Rogers Follies into the Concert Hall accompanied by CD tracks piped through portions of the complex’s PA system -- including adjacent backstage spaces and hallways -- at a decibel level approaching that of nuclear detonations. Between these two extremes, the cozy Studio Theatre was being configured into a lecture hall for a photography class with nothing to be heard save the gentle whirr of a slide projector.

There was absolutely no hint of sound wafting from the Music and Theatre Hall into its adjacent tile and plaster lobby at the north end of the Center. Was there really a concert going on in there?

Of far greater importance, inside the hall the concert itself was absolutely, positively, perfectly balanced. It was as though the 60-member complement of the Symphony was seated in a wood paneled living room having invited close to 500 friends to enjoy their musicale. The intimacy of the hall was a surprise, too, with audience members almost spilled onto the stage floor or into the laps of the string section. Noticeably absent was even one scintilla of noise or any acoustical distraction. Air handlers, ductwork, mechanical systems all have been made subordinate to the acoustical desires. I hasten to add that chamber groups, solo vocalists, choirs and other “quiet” groups will revel as much as audiences do in the delight of their ears’ experience here.

The Studio Theatre was unperturbed as well, as I mentioned. A “black-box” space with modular moveable floors, elevated side galleries and enough lighting circuits to satisfy any application, this student-use teaching facility marks part of the overlapping of the old high school space with the new Center.

Behind the Center, two floors of classrooms, galleries, labs, dance and stage rehearsal halls, offices and support services are laid out in a huge labyrinth. This inner complex was bustling with students involved in music, theatre, dance, scenography, pottery & ceramics, photography, and artistic CAD-CAM. Interspersed along broad hallways were various galleries of student art exhibits. At least two-thirds of the Center is given over to academic use, so one should expect to see and hear students. This was a fairly typical day, but you would have been hard-pressed to note any of the academic hubbub from the ‘front half’, as it were, including that frightfully loud muzak that was shaking us along the Concert Hall’s backstage hallways.

Nor could you hear the plus-sized roar from inside the Concert Hall, either. It , too, is an acoustic gem. After all, Andrea Bocelli came to his October engagement armed with towers of speakers and the usual rock concert sound system, but after his dress rehearsal, all the industrial grade sound stuff was loaded out and Andrea sang in his natural voice downstage of the orchestra. And was heard all the way up to the last row of the house -- which isn’t all that far from the footlights, by the way.