Creating Sound and Calendar Harmony

Our community has been abuzz since Sarasota Orchestra’s March 24 announcement that identified a site on Fruitville Road for a music center featuring a state-of-the-art, acoustic concert hall.

The new facility will address the pressing need for suitable acoustics and the well-documented calendar demands that are limiting available venue access for a wide range of local music organizations seeking performance dates.

Some may wonder just how important is a hall built for acoustic music for Sarasota Orchestra, our community, and our audiences.

Every bit as important as a Stradivarius is to a violinist, according to Bramwell Tovey, Sarasota Orchestra’s late music director.

Maestro Tovey explained that the fine workmanship and extraordinary acoustics of some 300-year-old violins are the standard upon which we experience the emotional connection to music, freed from electronic amplifications or other artificial enhancements.

“For an orchestra to best resonate, it must be done naturally, in an acoustic hall,” he said.

Having once performed in a multi-purpose hall where acoustics studies showed that only 67% of the sound generated on the stage reached row 10, Maestro Tovey recognized the transformative impact on an audience when more of the sound of the orchestra reaches all in attendance.

Imagine a concert experience where the music played on stage reaches every seat with well blended, rich, and intricate elements truly representative of what the conductor and musicians are creating in the moment on stage.

A single cello playing alone, the hazy shimmer of a violin section creating a soft aura of sound, the beauty of a triangle resonating from the rear of the orchestra – these are the sounds that an acoustic hall can turn into deeply emotional experiences for audience members. Classical music can be so much more accessible and meaningful when the vibrations of sound from the concert stage reach the audience with fullness and clarity.

Multi-purpose halls are built for a range of uses requiring mechanical and physical elements for lighting, staging, and sets that by their very existence necessitate an acoustical compromise. By utilizing electronic amplifications, multi-purpose halls are what the name implies – good for many purposes. But, unfortunately, not ideal for an orchestra.

Performing in five different venues, Sarasota Orchestra has grown into an outstanding regional orchestra. But on the “better, best” spectrum, the opportunity for the highest artistic achievement can only be realized in a hall built for acoustic music.

Since there is no acoustic hall anywhere in this broader southwest region of Florida, Sarasota Orchestra’s vision to add this wonderful, new asset to our region will further elevate the community’s position as the cultural heart of our state. The concert hall will also offer desperately needed calendar relief for area acoustic music organizations that struggle with finding performance and rehearsal dates with current venues at full capacity.

This will benefit our regional economy, the quality of life in our community, the future experiences of many generations of young people, and all of us who believe that music is important to the human experience.