In Friday’s (8/1) San Antonio Express-News (Texas), David Hendricks reports that the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio tested the acoustics of the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts’ 1,759-seat main concert hall on Thursday, before an audience of 800. “Audiences ‘will be blown away. It will be a sound they haven’t heard before,’ said [acoustician] Chris Blair, principal and tuning conductor for Connecticut-based Akustiks LLC…. Several musicians of the San Antonio Symphony and YOSA alumni also sat in with the youth orchestra…. ‘There’s more reverberance than we are used to,’ [YOSA Music Director Troy] Peters said. ‘There’s warmth. That’s a good thing.’ … The Tobin Center opens for its first formal event Sept. 4 featuring members of the San Antonio Symphony, Ballet San Antonio and Opera San Antonio. The consultants discussed the hall’s acoustics goals with San Antonio Symphony Music Director Sebastian Lang-Lessing. They said Lang-Lessing wants impact, envelopment and an even frequency response from high notes to bass notes. The acoustics of the hall also can be adjusted by an orchestra’s sectional seating arrangement and the possible use of risers for the musicians…. The Tobin Center will be San Antonio’s first concert hall built with symphonic and opera music in mind.”
Posted August 5, 2014
Pictured: Tobin Center for the Performing Arts during last Thursday’s acoustic test before a live audience. Photo by Kin Man Hui/San Antonio Express-News
