“Just like that, San Francisco has a superb new performance venue for music,” writes Joshua Kosman in Monday’s (12/15) San Francisco Chronicle. “Saturday night’s tremendous opening event of SoundBox—the term does double duty for the space itself, in the rear of Davies Symphony Hall, and the concert series that the San Francisco Symphony has installed in it—was as exciting for what it offered as for what it promised.… This space has long been known as Zellerbach Studio A—a drab, acoustically dead barn where rehearsals were held.… The chief metamorphosis has been acoustic, thanks to the sonic wizardry of the Constellation Sound System out of Meyer Sound … that allows the space to simulate a huge range of acoustical environments…. The venue unveiled on Saturday had the spacious charm of a funky but well-heeled nightclub. … There was—this is key—a bar.… The median age [appeared to be] something like two decades younger than that of an average Symphony subscription concert…. Open seating and alcohol notwithstanding, the audience maintained a respectful, indeed, enraptured silence through all of the musical offerings.”
Posted December 15, 2014
Photo of San Francisco Symphony at SoundBox by Stefan Cohen
