"Words fail to describe our joy, our emotion. But maybe music can.”
And with that introduction, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Music Director Stephane Denève led the orchestra through the jubilant, brassy ruckus of John Williams’ “Liberty Fanfare.”
The composer wrote the piece for the 1986 rededication of the Statue of Liberty. Around 10 a.m. last Friday, Denève and the orchestra repurposed it as a warm hug to celebrate the reopening of a renovated and expanded Powell Hall, as the ensemble performed there in full force before an audience for the first time since May 2023.
The 20-minute performance for a few hundred arts and business leaders was the highlight of a sneak peek at the handiwork wrought by a $140 million project that was years in the making. The SLSO has raised $173 million and counting for the effort, with much of the excess funding going into an endowment for facility upkeep.
The general public gets its first look at the renovated concert hall and a 64,000-square-foot expansion that includes a rehearsal studio when the SLSO opens its subscription season with a Friday morning concert.
A new face for an old building
A sudsy puddle sat on the floor of an otherwise-sparkling entrance lobby one morning about 10 days before the Sept. 26 opening concert.
One man was busy polishing the floor in the new entranceway, not far from that lingering puddle. Outside, another gave the streetlamps on Grand Boulevard a fresh coat of black paint.
At the height of construction, as many as 130 workers were onsite at a time. At the endgame, no more than a few dozen were visible on a tour of the newly named Jack C. Taylor Music Center, which includes the concert hall itself.
“A lot of people are concerned that we didn't preserve the iconic look of Powell Hall. But you can see that we've really restored it,” project manager Anna Levy said as she gestured at her surroundings. “It's Powell Hall, just better.”
The most dramatic change is the sparkling addition to the building, which wraps around its west and south sides along Samuel Shepard Drive and Delmar Boulevard. Its outer edge is an off-street drive to allow for easy patron drop-offs; no longer will Grand Boulevard be illuminated by the flashing hazard lights of cars whose drivers hunt for a spot to double-park and drop off mobility-impaired concertgoers.
Powell Hall was built in 1925 as a vaudeville theater and later became a movie palace. The Versailles-inspired boxiness of the building is now complemented by a sleek, arch-shaped entranceway. Its gentle slope — along with other curves seen in the indoor architecture — is meant to evoke not the Gateway Arch but the shape of violins, violas and basses, or, if the viewer prefers, the region’s flowing rivers.
The prominent doorway here is one of three the public can now use to enter the building. The cramped box office lobby of the old Powell Hall, where patrons shuffled through patiently en route to the grand foyer, is now a cafe.
“Prior to the renovation, there was really one front side of the building and then three back sides,” Levy said. “Now we've opened up all elevations of the building, really reaching out to the community and welcoming everyone into this space.”
Pianos and purses
When SLSO President and CEO Marie-Hélène Bernard started her tenure in early 2015, she shared a frank assessment with the board about the orchestra’s much-loved home: Beloved as it is, Powell Hall was in serious need of refurbishing.
“I appreciated its acoustics and its beauty. But to me, it looked tired,” she said while seated in one of the facility's new dressing rooms for guest artists.
Shortly after she took the reins, Bernard received the nod to start exploring renovation options. In 2016, she formed a task force of musicians, architects, board members and staff, led by Emily Pulitzer.
Bernard and the task force got the OK to hire international architecture firm Snøhetta in 2019. The design team grew to include Chicago-based acoustic design firm Kirkegaard; audio/visual consultants WSDG, of New York; and St. Louis firm Christner Architects, the project’s architect of record.
In the old Powell Hall, musicians found warm-up space wherever they could. Sometimes they brushed up their professionally renowned instrumental chops in the basement or boiler room. There was little dressing space for musicians — especially for women, who make up roughly half of the orchestra but were squeezed into a basement room. Storage space for instruments was extremely scarce.
It wasn’t uncommon among Powell Hall regulars to spot concert violinists and violists stepping off the sidewalk and through the stage door dressed in stage-ready evening gowns and carrying instrument cases. Musicians with bags or purses tossed them in one big trunk, which was locked during performances.
“It was clear that there was a need to enhance the audience experience and the artist experience,” Bernard said.
The much-refurbished backstage area now includes spacious changing rooms, instrument storage, a second music library and a comfortable lounge. A dressing room for guest artists is soundproofed and large enough to wheel in a Steinway piano.
Patrons may never spot other details that will contribute to the musical cause — like wall-mounted cubbies for musicians to store and access the coffee mugs that help power them through rehearsals.
Another motivator for the expansion was the newly built 3,700-square-foot multi-use studio.
The flexible space will serve as rehearsal hall for the SLSO’s Symphony Chorus, IN UNISON Chorus and Youth Orchestra. When the stage of Powell Hall was otherwise occupied in the past, these ensembles rehearsed and warmed up in nearby buildings including the Third Baptist Church and the Grand Center Arts Academy.
The floor of the studio is the same white oak found onstage in Powell Hall, and sound-sensitive curtains behind its walls can be adjusted to create the best acoustic environment for whoever is using the space. Musicians will be able to play and sing in the studio while the orchestra is onstage down the corridor in Powell Hall, with no sound leaking through.
The studio is also fit for educational programs, lectures and Q&As, small chamber recitals, special events augmented by a new catering kitchen and space for the organization’s growing efforts with video and audio recording, including digital education tools.
Can you hear me now?
Another key to the renovation is the sound in Powell Hall.
Acoustic designers performed extensive tests, beaming sound from the stage and monitoring how different frequencies moved through the space to microphones placed around the seating area. They sent a bank of audience seats to a laboratory to study how they absorb and reflect sound. Musicians shared their insights from playing in the room.
“We came to the realization that people really love the acoustics from the balcony,” said Brian Corry, principal acoustics designer for the project and a partner with Kirkegaard. “That's where people tended to want to listen. The sound under the balcony was a little dead.”
With the help of 3D modeling of the concert hall, Corry and his team worked to improve the acoustics in the dead spots without changing the sound in the balcony. Changes include moving the rear wall forward eight feet, which helped reflect sound back toward the stage more evenly, so musicians could hear themselves better. The new wall also creates a gap between the concert hall and the foyer, helping contain sound from outside the room. Plaster wings placed elsewhere in the hall help redirect sound evenly around the space.
Although the design team did sound tests with musicians before the project was complete, Corry said the success of the acoustic improvements can’t be gauged definitively until the orchestra plays for a full audience.
Early reports are positive.
“When I sat there in June listening from those seats, it was a revelation to me,” Bernard said. “It’s a lot better than it used to be. There’s a resonance that is very interesting.”
Nicotine stains and cupholders
Concertgoers will also experience more conveniences during their visit. Powell Hall now has bathrooms and concession areas outside each seating level; two larger, faster elevators to join the existing pair; a larger box office; and wider seats, with cupholders, in the concert hall. Accessible seating is now spread throughout rather than clustered, as in the past, at the back of the orchestra section.
Some of the venue’s seating sections are renamed for ease of use. Patrons who once searched for their seats on the Dress Circle, Grand Circle or Terrace Circle will now navigate the more intuitive taxonomy of Lower Balcony, Mid-Balcony and Upper Balcony.
There are also cosmetic upgrades all around Powell Hall, though the space retains its vintage feel.
The original renovation design didn’t call for the new coat of white paint that was eventually applied to the inside walls of the concert hall. When workers removed the old seats — most of which dated back at least as far as the SLSO’s 1968 arrival at the venue — and let some natural light into the newly open space, they realized the color of paint didn’t quite match throughout the room. Decades of smoking-friendly policies in the venue also made a mark: nicotine stains on the ceiling.
The paint job, paired with new LED fixtures making for a more vivid lighting effect, was a $2 million project added on the fly. It required two years of work, including two months just to build scaffolding inside the room.
“It’s much more brilliant, more consistent. It just has a freshness and a brightness,” Levy said of the overall effect.
The gleaming foyer outside the concert hall also became a workshop; construction crews built an onsite plaster studio there to carefully match and replace older plaster work on nearby walls and ceilings. Gold-colored details were carefully repainted.
A moment 10 years in the making
As musicians and staff prepared for the first concerts in the renovated space, the moment was a decade in the making for Bernard and a similarly long trek for members of the original task force.
The thing that connects all the details of the renovation and expansion, Bernard said, is the goal of making the Jack C. Taylor Music Center a social hub.
“We have people who are aging and feeling lonely, and the symphony becomes their place where they make friends and get that social connection. It’s also true for a lot of young people who work in businesses here and do not find the outlets to develop friendships or meet significant others,” Bernard said.
“I very much see this space as one of creativity,” she added, “as one of learning opportunities and as one of social connections.”
