WSO wants province to shell out

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This article was published 11/02/2019 (2047 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Centennial Concert Hall can bring down the curtain, but it can’t bring down the acoustical shell needed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (WSO) for the audience — and the musicians — to hear the music properly.

The orchestra shell, made of the same material as the acoustic buffers on the sides of the stage, has been locked in place far above the concert hall stage for four years, after it was deemed too dangerous to continue to use the mechanical system to lower and raise it.

WSO executive director Trudy Schroeder said, despite numerous meetings with various provincial ministers (the province owns the Winnipeg concert hall while a Crown corporation manages it), the request for $2.6 million in funding for repairs has fallen on deaf ears.

She said there is federal cultural infrastructure money available, but the province has to make the repair a priority. “It is an essential piece of equipment for the symphony,” Schroeder said Monday. “During meetings with the province, (former WSO conductor) Alexander Mickelthwate would say it would be like asking the Winnipeg Jets to play hockey without ice because the ice-making mechanism is broken.”

Schroeder said, when in use, the shell surrounds the musicians on both sides, behind them, and above, to help the music project out toward the audience — instead of the way it is now, with part of it being lost in the rafters or in the room behind.

She said it is also tough for the musicians themselves to hear each other across the stage. The symphony has been doing all sorts of things to alleviate the effect, including setting up stage risers as a temporary wall behind when the orchestra plays.

“The audience experience is still very good, but it is the quality of the experience… for an orchestra, the room is part of the instrument.”

As well, Schroeder said to counteract the problem, the musicians are forcing themselves to play harder — something which is beginning to take a toll.

“We’re starting to get injuries from the orchestra, including repetitive strain injuries,” she said.

Schroeder made a public appeal to the crowd at Saturday’s show of Dvorak & Rachmaninoff — which also featured a guest appearance by Mickelthwate — to phone their MLAs to persuade them to help pay to fix the shell. She said the next steps would be a petition and mail-in cards.

A provincial spokeswoman said Monday the problem with the orchestra shell is “a complex and unique project, and there’s work that has to be done to co-ordinate this project with other repair work at the concert hall. These conversations are ongoing, and will continue again with the WSO in the next couple weeks.”

The spokeswoman said “Manitoba continues to invest in the venue,” including $5 million last year to replace the building’s fire alarm system, and an interim acoustical shell for $179,000 “to allow time to scope out the best solution.”

Schroeder said the temporary shell — black rectangles hanging at the back of the stage — was “better than nothing, but it does not replace a physical shell designed to work for an orchestra in a performing space… It is not a long-term solution.”

Meanwhile, the problem with the shell was even included in the conceptual development plan produced for the corporation in February 2017.

The $250-million plan looked at the arts area and proposed several projects, including building a parkade at Main Street and Rupert Street, demolishing Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Warehouse Theatre and replacing it with a new Black Box Theatre in the parking lot between the theatre company’s main stage and the Pantages Theatre, and construction of a smaller 1,600-seat new music hall for the WSO to perform in when the larger 2,305-seat auditorium is not needed.

The plan also looked at upgrades needed at the half-century-old concert hall, with the orchestra shell problem the most pressing.

“The orchestra shell is not functioning correctly and has been temporarily secured in the open position,” the plan says. “The mechanical repair of the shell is estimated at $2 million by Wenger Acoustical Products of New York.”

Schroeder said the price tag for the repair is now closer to $2.6 million.

Other repairs and upgrades needed for the concert hall include reconfiguring the seating to add a centre aisle to meet current building code requirements, upgraded elevators, and create a barrier-free washroom stall for universal access and a gender-neutral washroom.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca