“Normally, we would be concerned about separating the lobby from the performance hall, so attendees can make noise in the lobby without disturbing things in the hall,” Myers states. “Here, there are sliding shutters at the upper rear wall below the acoustic treatment that deliberately connect the performance space to the lobby, so if people are getting a drink during the show they are hearing some natural sound coming through those openings. The shutters can be closed if NOJO is doing a recording session—something they wanted the option of doing.”
To further connect the performance space to the lobby and ultimately the street, Kronberg and his team considered several options. “We ended up integrating collapsible telescoping folding seats, so the whole center row of hall seating collapses and disappears, allowing the stage to be viewed from the street,” he says.
Chops
Inside the performance hall, Myers and his team essentially created a classical recital hall but with nuances for jazz—a space that provided good communication between performers onstage, surfaces around the performers that pushed the sound out to the audience, audience chamber surfaces that supported the sound from the stage and a general reverberation time in the room that let the music mix without outstaying its welcome. All of this had to be achieved while avoiding flutter (when sound is trapped in a repetitive pattern, typically between two flat surfaces) and echo (specific strong late reflections that make sound distant and unclear).
NOJO desired a room in which some instruments could be lightly amplified—basically giving a little boost to the bass and/or piano—and a vocal soloist could be miked. “If you’re really amplifying, you can stuff a room full of absorption to control the natural buildup of sound and then point your loud speakers at the audience and crank everything up,” Myers notes. “That is an approach that gives a particular kind of sound, but it wasn’t the sound NOJO was interested in. We had to be conscious of the orientation of surfaces and surface treatments to achieve supportive reflections off surfaces without sound building up in a way that would be harsh or overwhelming.”
“This was a particular challenge that led to some of our audio equipment choices for the project,” Darling adds. “This is not a really large room and the jazz orchestra is a large ensemble composed primarily of brass instruments, so they’re capable of producing more than enough volume in the room. In fact, one of our issues was to ensure the room didn’t get too loud. The sound of the acoustic instruments is very accurate in the space, which creates the need for vocalists using the sound system to sound really good, as well, so that everyone walking out will not be saying ‘boy, the orchestra sounded great but what was wrong with the vocalist?’ We installed a high-quality system with a good mixer and it goes to some lengths in audio engineering—the cables that are used, terminations and certainly the loudspeaker are high quality.”
In regard to surface treatments, Myers paid particular attention to the stage area. “Generally in a recital hall for classical music we have gently curved sidewalls or a gently curved ceiling overhead,” he says. “Here, we did deeply curved sidewalls and deeply curved reflectors overhead, so the musicians still get a good first reflection off those surfaces. Because the curve is tighter, the sound doesn’t build up in that part of the room the way it would in a classical recital hall.”
Instead, those stronger curves quickly push the sound off the stage and out to the audience or back against the rear wall of the stage where a curtain—something not found in a classical recital hall—lets the drum set that is directly in front of the curtain play at a comfortable level without reinforcing the sound off the back wall.
A relatively low ceiling height forced the team to install two curved reflectors—rather than one—above the stage to ensure sound wouldn’t be oppressive over the stage. “It also meant we could put a little absorption between the reflectors that gave a bit of loudness relief onstage,” Myers recalls.
A video screen that can be lowered between the overhead reflectors and the back-wall curtain lets the jazz orchestra utilize video during performances. The screen also allows other types of programming to take place within the hall, such as meetings and presentations.
Myers loves wood as a material around musicians and the Peoples Health New Orleans Jazz Market features reclaimed wood from a local source. “Wood is slightly porous and by giving it a natural finish instead of varnishing it, that slight porosity makes it gently absorptive at high frequencies so the sound you get reflecting off it is a warmer sound—not as harsh or shrill if you had a gypsum or plexiglass reflector,” he says.
Painted gypsum-board walls on each side of the audience lean back slightly and are not quite parallel to provide a strong supportive reflection off their surface without sound fluttering back and forth.
The wall behind the audience provides a great example of the acoustic team’s collaboration with the architectural team. “We were interested in the design of that surface because sound from the stage is going up and hitting that wall, interacting with the wall and ceiling above it, and that corner will tend to reflect sound back to the stage and back to the front part of the audience,” Myers explains.
If the wall was flat and met a flat ceiling, the reflection returning to the stage would be an echo. Myers described to Kronberg that the upper corner would need to return sound so musicians could hear themselves while enveloping the audience in sound. “We proposed a design that would have curves that were sort of randomized and then thin felt applied to the curves. The thin felt is a high-frequency absorber, so it takes the edgiest part of the reflection and rolls it off,” Myers says.
Kronberg designed repeated panels and various curves that are randomized and pulled apart to include lighting between them, which produces a warm orange glow at the upper rear of the audience. “This is Eric’s way of decorating these panels that are absolutely there for the acoustics,” Myers says. “Eric was fantastic to work with; he paid attention to what we were describing and then turned it into beautiful architecture. The hall is a warm room; it is welcoming; and it provides a great feeling. That’s all about the architecture.”
PHOTOS: Peter Vanderwarker