Jan 5, 2020
Built for Time
How the Seattle Symphony brought to life the experimental recital hall of the future
In the space of two short years, the Seattle Symphony transformed a 20-year-old aging educational space into a sonically brilliant, visually stunning, multi-functional venue for all ages. The project was unprecedented, both technologically and logistically; it set out to be all things to all people, 2,500 square feet that would support intimate chamber concerts, community choral rehearsals, board meetings, cocktail parties, and educational events for kids. The new venue, called Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center, was completed on time and under budget. Now, 6 months after opening, Symphony staff, artists, and architects reflect on the early days of the project and their hopes for the future of Octave 9.
Our cast of characters:
- Laura Reynolds, project manager, Seattle Symphony Vice President of Education & Community Engagement
- Seth Parker Woods, cellist and experimental artist, and Octave 9’s first Artist in Residence
- Scott Crawford, Principal, LMN Architects
- Renee Duprel, Associate Vice President of Development, Campaign and Paul Gjording, Director of Institutional Giving and Government Relations
Shaya: Tell me about the early days of this project. How did the idea of Octave 9 come about?
Laura: When I joined the Seattle Symphony in 2012, they were already starting to think about what Soundbridge could be in the future. Soundbridge was our education space on the corner of 2nd and Union [in downtown Seattle], and it opened in 2001. It was an amazing space that was like an interactive museum, with a classroom and performance space within that venue. Over time, some of the exhibits had deteriorated, and eventually it became a great space for early childhood learning experiences — very acoustic experiences. But it wasn’t very flexible, and it had a very small capacity. The footprint for that space is about 2,500 square feet all-in, even for Octave 9.
Scott: Soundbridge was doing well in terms of programs and serving the community, but there was a desire to have the space act more as a performance space — to continue to support community engagement and educational outreach events, but also allow it to be a performance space. Prior to Octave 9, it could have small performances, maybe 50 people in a very tiny room.
Shaya: What was your process of deciding what it would be and how it would function?
Laura: We interviewed composers, educators in the museum field and the performing arts field, artists, and folks who had recently designed venues. We talked with some folks at Carnegie Hall, because they just finished with the Weill Music Institute, and we talked to folks in the UK who were working in VR. We interviewed a really broad range of people. But we also kept doing our programs in Soundbridge and talking to the teachers and staff and community members who were experiencing that space, and finding out what they liked, what didn’t they like. All of that ultimately informed what we needed to build.
There were a couple of interviews that had a really profound impact on me. I remember talking to Holly Jacobson, the executive director of Path with Art, which is one of our community partners. Holly shared that it had been wonderful to have Soundbridge as a rehearsal space — but that what’s so exciting is that in Octave 9, their community will be welcome into the future, into the most high-tech, beautiful, state-of-the-art space in the building. And that statement to the community — that our organization would invite them into the best space instead of some random closet somewhere — is really meaningful. When I thought about it from that perspective, and I thought about the families, and the schools, and all of the people that we’re welcoming in, to symbolically have this space that is the newest shiny bright object being the place for them is something that really inspired us as we built out the venue, because whenever there was a question about, “Should this be more for one sort of activity or another,” it always came back to being a hub for our community — the artists we work with, our community partners, children, families — and thinking about how together we can re-think the role of the Symphony in our community, and think about the future of music from that perspective. That part of the process was like a lightbulb for all of us. Having that shared purpose was centering, it kept us focused.
Scott: The Symphony came to us with an initial idea of how they wanted to change the types of events happening in the space. Simultaneous with that, there were conversations between the Symphony and Meyer Sound, with an interest in bringing in Meyer Sound’s Constellation® Acoustic System [which can digitally change the acoustic architecture of a room]. So that was a given, at the very beginning. There was excitement about the Constellation system and the ability to have this digital architecture for manipulating the acoustics, and what we could do with it. That was an interesting way for us to start.
Even though we had an idea of why the Symphony was excited about the Constellation system, which we had used on projects previously, we wanted to know where they were coming from, what the purpose of that system was for them. So we questioned the Symphony around that, and at one point, there was a statement made that “We’re looking to be the symphony of the future” — which was very thought-provoking. But then we pushed back and asked: What exactly does that mean?
From there, we had a lot of conversations with the Symphony around the different kinds of programming they wanted to happen within the space. We asked them what type of activities they wanted to have there, and it became apparent after that conversation that it was every activity. They wanted to keep the educational outreach and community engagement components, and also have experimental performances, possibly lease it out as a meeting room, have board meetings and cocktail parties in the space. That was the most clarifying for us, because prior to that we were looking at much more of a fixed condition within the space, at designing it so that it would perform the function of acting as a performance space that you could do some other things with. That’s when we realized we needed to be approaching it a little bit differently. All of a sudden, it became this idea that it’s not just about the performance. It’s a flexible space that can allow new opportunities, maybe even bring in additional revenue.
We embraced that fully. What the Constellation system was allowing us to do acoustically, was to transform the acoustics of the room. So then we started wondering, on the design side, what other ways this room could transform to allow for the variety of uses that would take place within it. From there, we arrived at pairing with the acoustic immersive environment a visually immersive environment through the use of 13 curved screens and 10 ultra-short-throw projectors. That would give us the ability to deploy one screen and have a simple presentation, or deploy all of them and get a more immersive environment.
Laura: Out of those conversations, we came up with Octave 9. We have an open room option that can be a totally acoustic experience and serve as a meeting space, but then you can also pull screens out around a circle and go from that extreme to a fully visually immersive space that’s like a shared VR experience. There’s no fixed seating, so we can accommodate whatever kind of setup we want. There’s also no real front of the room.
I think the thing that has been great to see throughout the process has been the focus on tailoring the experiences to the audience, to serve the art that’s being made. To see a venue that’s adapting, both acoustically and in terms of its shape… it’s this amazing sandbox that we get to play in.
Shaya: Octave 9 is unique in its capacity to support this amount of experimentation and creativity all under one roof. Seth, you’ve been working with the Symphony to calibrate the venue. What does that mean for a space that can be anything?
Seth: The room is an instrument, at the end of the day, so it’s going to have to be taken through the ropes before it starts to really settle. You know how sometimes you go into an old western concert hall and everything is already set up? The hall has been played in already, for decades, or sometimes centuries. For Octave 9, the question was how to recreate something along those lines, while also bringing in something new and edgy.
From seeing open house events that the Symphony had set up, to looking at my own set, that was interesting to figure out. I needed a specific type of acoustic feeling for specific pieces, especially the work George Lewis did, which has a crazy immersive ambisonics setup. We’re essentially throwing sound around the room in real time, with me as the live input, so we had to figure out both how to get it so it wouldn’t cause people to feel seasick, and how to make it comfortable for me to hear all the different elements running at the same time. And then how to tweak the presets so the cello wouldn’t sound tinny or metallic, but more like the instrument that I’m used to, underneath my ear. And then how to get that very subjective sound back to the audience.
I remember walking in the very first day. We went over the various changes in the acoustics, and I thought: It’s not there yet. We’d gone through stages of tweaking, designing, further designing, further changes, and then we opened and did multiple open houses. And even then, it wasn’t ready. It was still very, very raw. It’s new, it’s exciting, because you’re throwing sound around and you’re hearing, “Ooh, feel the acoustics! Now I’m in a cathedral!” — and that’s great! But, now, how do we hone it? How do we make it even better? How do we turn it into a really strong, captivating vehicle for expression, where people will want to get programmed, people will to want to send proposals, people will want to experience it, both as observer and as creator?
Shaya: Does having Octave 9 as a “duet partner” open up new artistic possibilities?
Seth: Of course, because it’s giving back. There’s a feedback loop, just as there is with any concert hall, but normally, at Carnegie Hall, you can’t tweak the acoustics. They are what they are. Here, I can do more because I’ve altered certain characteristics of the acoustics and the ways in which it deals with sound waves. That forces you to either stick to your guns, or adjust. It causes me to think about where I can play it safe or take more risks in the performance, or in certain parts of compositions. It becomes an interesting kind of experimentation, even in real time. The interesting part is, an artist can go in and do an early-stage design-out for their setup — what the diffusion is going to look like, what type of warmth they’re looking for, what they need the system to be able to highlight. That’s an exciting adventure and endeavor that you don’t get at most other concert halls.
Shaya: What is a typical first impression?
Scott: You tell someone: “You’re going to go in, and you can make it sound like any sized space.” And they’re like: “What does that even mean?” How aware are they of the difference in acoustics as they go into different types of spaces? What I really liked was, a lot of the musicians were skeptical, and they would look at pictures and say: “That’s a lot of carpet, there’s a lot of soft surfaces in there.” And people would walk in the room for a rehearsal and think: “I don’t know, is this really going to work?” And then they’d start playing and be like, “Holy sh*t! I can’t believe what can happen within this space.” It was pretty cool to hear that there was surprise, even for the musicians.
Shaya: It took four years to fully fund Octave 9, starting with government grants, then a generous matching challenge from James and Sherry Raisbeck, followed by many individual gifts. What concrete strategies and tactics did you employ to bring donors along for the ride, especially before it was possible to experience the vision tangibly?
Renee & Paul: The novelty of Octave 9 proved both challenging and advantageous to work with. Especially in the very early stages of securing funding, it took a leap of faith on the donors’ part since discussion with private funders began before even architecture renderings were fully available. We leveraged the novelty as a major selling point — frontline fundraisers helped potential donors understand that Octave 9 would be a groundbreaking attraction, with no other place like it in the world. The excitement of helping to create something new was appealing to many in the Symphony donor family. As construction got well under way, fundraising efforts were also boosted by the newness of what we were trying to create with Octave 9. We shared with donors that artists around the world were excited to have the chance to perform in the new space. Well before construction completed, many artists reached out to our Artistic Planning team to express their desire to interact with and perform in Octave 9.
We also held events that gave donors and prospective donors behind-the-scenes peeks and experiences as the project progressed, which helped secure more support and garner excitement for its completion. “Hard hat tours” of the active construction site helped donors see first-hand the transformation the space was undergoing. We held these tours regularly through the 2018–2019 season, and seeing the progression was motivating to donors. We also held a ceiling assembly party — an up-close look at the installation of the honeycomb ceiling. This event really gave donors a sense of how the space was coming together and the impact of their support for the project.
Critical to the success of Octave 9 was having a project leader who was both a visionary and a cheerleader — someone who could paint a picture of the vision, especially since it was such a new endeavor without many points of reference, could clearly articulate the central message around the project, and could envision the longevity and impact of the project: How does this change the organization, and what will the organization look like 10 or 20 years out?
Shaya: Octave 9 came about because Soundbridge had reached the end of its lifespan. What does longevity look like for the new space, and what kind of design considerations were necessary to support that plan?
Laura: We learned a lot from Soundbridge. The technology that was initially put into that space became obsolete, so we thought about that a lot. For one thing, we’ve set aside a budget to maintain the technology. Also, all of the technology is focused on creating incredible performance experiences. The role technology plays in this space is such that that it’s centered around the music and the art, whereas in Soundbridge it was more like a museum exhibit. We’ve tried to steer ourselves away from having technology in the space for technology’s sake, and instead it’s like maintaining any other concert venue, where we have lights and equipment that are critical to the performance experience. Anything that’s in the space is designed to be a lasting part of the space. We have great relationships with our vendors, so those are things that we’ve had conversations about — asking about the lifecycle of the equipment, and planning for how it will be cared for over time.
We’ve built the infrastructure for this space is so that when technology evolves, when the next-level projector system makes this projector obsolete, we have the infrastructure on the back end to be able to plug in the next generation of things. So when we go from being in an immersive experience to holograms (laughs), that’s something we can have a conversation about. But we won’t need to redo the space. It’s designed to be built for time.
Seth: The hall is designed for the long run. It’s going to get better with more performances, with bringing in people who want to try to do something a little different. Over time, being able to present a wide spectrum of work is going to enrich the technical creative team, who are coming up with new solutions, ways in which the hall can be used, benchmarks of where the hall sits best — and also where it can go. And then, again, bringing in people who will want to break all of that open and see how far they can go to break the system in a way that lets them do even more. In this way, programming will be the key for longevity: who you bring in, who’s excited. That’s what will keep that space alive and vibrant and attracting artists who are forward-thinking. I think that will continue to put Octave 9 on the map, keep forging it forward.
Laura: We’ve got great folks coming in this year who I think will help us stretch our imaginations of the space. I think that’s going to be an important part of how the space operates going forward — to constantly have fresh ideas and thoughts about the way that other people imagine the space, the way the artists imagine the space, the way the community imagines the space. If we are trying to control too much of what happens in the space, and how it happens, then I think the space will not achieve its goal of evolving. I’m glad we have so many incredible artists, like Seth and Claire Chase and Tyshawn Sorey coming in, to really push us, to keep us stretching the limits of what we might think is possible in there.
Shaya: Were there surprises along the way?
Laura: I think the thing that I heard most often throughout the project, with all of our partners, is that this was the most complicated small-room remodel that they’d ever experienced (laughs). It’s always hard for people to believe that it’s only 2,500 square feet. The density of technology in that space is enormous. So of course it takes a lot of coordination between everyone to get all of the pieces to work. On our end, it was a steep learning curve, and we’re still learning.
I think this is probably the case for any project: on the other side of it, or during it, you wish that you had more time. I wish that we had more time from when the space was finished to when we opened, to spend that time learning. [Ahead of the formal opening, Laura’s team had just two weeks to focus on learning the space and the technology.] On the other hand, I think we learned a lot just because we had to do it. Would we have learned everything we needed to learn if we’d had more time, or is it the process of just doing the events that helped us learn so quickly? If anything, I wish we’d had more time in that space, immersing ourselves in the venue before we had to produce an event — but I think that process also helped us learn a lot.
Something that is not a surprise but comes up a lot is the fact that we are literally next to 2nd Avenue [downtown], and there’s no lobby space. You open the door, and you’re out at the street. You open the door, and the sound of the street bleeds in. What to me has been really interesting is to see everyone’s reaction to that.
For us, it has always been about the space being a home for our community, a home for experimentation, research and development for the Seattle Symphony, a place to think about the ways that we’re continuing to grow our art. That door directly out to the street is symbolically important because it’s also the idea that what we’re doing isn’t necessarily precious in the way that it needs to be confined in this pristine place. Instead, it’s in a space that’s accessible — there’s a window in and out of our organization.
Having that direct access has also been a shift for audiences to experience the sound coming in. It’s been a shift in understanding our processes and how we become more okay with that, and let go.
Shaya: What does “letting go” look like?
Laura: Often, it’s just acknowledging the fact that it’s going to happen, that people may show up late, or that we may need to open the door in the middle of the concert — and that’s okay. That’s something that is just part of how the space operates. And it’s an opportunity to educate about the fact that this space is designed for experimentation, it’s designed to be open, it’s designed to be a space that really welcomes these moments that are unpredictable and unexpected. That, I think, has been a really great conversation to be able to have with folks, and it underlines why we have this space here. Because it’s more than just having a concert experience. It’s about pushing us to think about the future of music. That to me has been surprising but also exciting, because in a way that simple thing is pushing us even further.
Shaya: How are people engaging with the space?
Laura: Oh my gosh, it’s been amazing! It’s been one of my favorite parts of opening up the space. All kinds of people. We’ve had kids’ concerts where kids come in and they can’t stop looking at the ceiling because it’s so interesting. It became such a thing. Families were asking us, “Why is it shaped like that?” so much that we ended up creating a coloring sheet and scavenger hunt for kids for some of our concerts.
When artists come in, it’s so exciting to hear all of the ideas. The fact that walking into the space is sparking all of this creativity is underlining why we did this in the first place. It’s to inspire artists and inspire people to engage more deeply with the art. Melody Parker, [an acoustic engineer] from Meyer Sound, is a composer. She was talking about how the Constellation sound system is in a lot of spaces, including restaurants and concert venues, and she shared that what’s different about this space is that we intended for it to be used as an instrument and as a compositional tool. We commissioned her to write a piece for our 24-hour music marathon, which opened the whole marathon and is now one of the pre-sets in the space so that we can demonstrate spatialized sound. It’s so cool. It is just so cool to see how composers can use even the sound system as a device for their art.
Shaya: What advice would you offer someone who is embarking on a project like Octave 9?
Laura: When I think about the future, and think about anybody else that’s considering doing this, the advice that I would give people is to be patient. But really — be patient with your learning, and expect that things may not work. It’s important for folks to immerse themselves in that whole process, and to be okay with it not being perfect. I think that’s life advice generally, but in these sort of spaces where you’re experimenting with so many things, there’s so much newness that it’s really about having a team that supports each other throughout that entire process and is okay improvising. At the same time, be optimistic and positive. It might seem like it won’t work. There are lots of points when it will seem like it won’t work. You have to believe in it enough that those obstacles won’t stop you.
Scott: Make sure you have the right team on board that is going to bring the expertise you need. There was the desire from the beginning of the project to be able to operate everything in the room from an iPad. We kind of laughed every time it was said, like, “Yeah, most of it, probably — but not everything.” But everything is, actually, operating from an iPad now! It took a lot of work to create the interfaces to make that possible. That was not an insignificant effort. They were creating custom interfaces to tie together all these pieces that don’t automatically talk to each other. At a certain point, we realized we needed a consultant on the project, which was the A/V integrator. Prior to that, that wasn’t even a role we were talking about. Once we started seeing that the projectors needed to work with the lights needed to work with the sound system… which are all connected to each other on the back end, so that the microphones can pick up information and you can then tie them to change, say, the color of the lights… then it was like, well, we should be able to connect all these things! So there’s the ability, now, and this was part of the idea of this experimental visual nature of bringing artists in and letting them go crazy in response to the sounds. It was a little more challenging to do than maybe we had thought, but that was the value we were trying to deliver. So, you want people who can look at your system and say, “Yeah, I think we can get those pieces to talk to each other.”
Seth: Be flexible and open enough to be surprised. People think, when they come to the concert hall, that it’s going to sound reverberant, or it’s going to be warm — or have certain other familiar characteristics. They need to start with the expectation of something they know already, and then compare it against the experience. Or, they’re expecting something immediately over the top! So expect nothing, and expect everything. Because there’s no way to fit everyone’s expectations into the hall. It’s kind of impossible. But you can create a hall that can be flexible, which I think Octave 9 is. Use the techniques as a tool for expansive expression. Go beyond what is expected, go beyond what one can preconceive a concert to be — visually, sonically, and cinegraphically.
An abridged version of this interview was originally published in the Winter 2020 edition of Chamber Music Magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.
