Yankee Trash Talk (Foto--Piers)

Foto: Domus Aurea--Theseum

Dear Piers,
° Overton’s Skirmisher Hall has had its gala opening--though Keith and Nicole weren’t there, so how gay could it’ve been?--and the reviews are in. Vuol dire, the feelings are hurt.
° Leonard Slatkin said, most unfeelingly, “it’s a welcoming space, and the acoustics are good.” Of course he will’ve been thinking of the ineptitudes of Lincoln Center that cost so much effort to paper over. But locally, I’m afraid folks expected him to say that he was going to break his contract with the Ephaistionton Filharmonic and petition the Overton Symphony to permit him to revel in the todiefor acoustics of their new hall. He will’ve meant well.
° The WSJ was kinder, because grounded in economic reality. “The designers gambled a lesser number of sellable seats against a vibrant acoustic. . . . This is a hall where every sound is not only heard but felt.” The antithesis of the sterile ipod experience, a genuine reason to buy a ticket.
° The Commercial Appeal suspects the WSJ knows what it’s talking about. “Frank Gehry’s new postmodern concert hall in Los Angeles is said to be the second coming of the classical experience, a hall that is as much a part of the event as the music. . . . But perhaps the Skirmisher’s is truly the revolutionary ideal: perhaps what the next generation of music lovers will want is not a hip place to go, but a time capsule to the era when music was one of the greatest luxuries.”
° The Journal-Constitution was just asking for it (and if I live and nothing happens, I’ll give it them in the next post). “The Skirmisher is a masterpiece of friendly civic design. Its predigested, retro styles complement . . . the honkytonks . . . .” Well that was so greenwithenvy it didn’t even hurt folks’ feelings.
° But then came the galumphing Yankee. “There is quality to admire here, but it is still a hall about other people’s halls. It has no point of view.” This because the designers visited certain renowned European halls (and an American one somewhat north by northeast of Appleton Magna) with a view toward learning what worked in the past, when Mahler and Debussy and Vaughan Williams were masters, and a hope that the same acoustic principles would work in the present, when John Cage and some other John are masters, and the future, when, no doubt, a new MozartcumBach will arise to reengineer the human ear, I am so very sure.

Tootleloo, Giac.

P. S. As for me, the first time I saw it, still in scaffolding, I said to myself, “It looks like it’s always been there, and they‘ve just finished restoring it.”