[Dixielandjazz] Banishing the Mikes

[Stephen G Barbone]

Three cheers for natural sound. Hope it happens in Jazz.

Cheers, cheers, cheers
Steve Barbone

November 5, 2009 - NY TIMES - by Anthony Tommasini


Mikes Banished, Natural Sound Returns to City Opera

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
The New York City Opera — missing in action through the 2008-9 season  
as it grappled with a debilitating deficit and a chaotic leadership  
crisis — returns on Thursday evening with “American Voices,” a gala  
program at its extensively renovated home, the David H. Koch Theater.  
There is no doubt what the main question hovering over the proceedings  
will be: How are the acoustics of the renovated hall?

Before hearing a note in the spiffily remodeled auditorium, which I  
toured on Monday, I can make one sure prediction: There will be a  
marked improvement in the integrity and naturalness of the sound. How  
can I know this in advance? Because the theater’s dreaded  
amplification system (euphemistically called a sound-enhancement  
system by City Opera officials and termed an acoustical control system  
by its Dutch designers) is gone.

After decades of frustration with the theater’s dull acoustics, City  
Opera, while directed by Paul Kellogg, installed the system in 1999, a  
hotly debated move in an art form that has long cultivated natural  
singing and natural acoustics. But every microphone, amplifier, wire  
and speaker has been removed, said George Steel, who has been the  
company’s general manager and artistic director since February, as he  
stood on the stage on Monday. For proof he pointed to the spaces  
beneath the tiered balconies right next to the proscenium, where big  
curved wall boxes used to enclose the system’s electronic brains and  
biggest speakers. They are gone. . . .

But for the first time in a decade the music making at the theater  
will be guaranteed to have no electronic filtering, no amplified  
boost. Whatever the acoustical results, the sound will at least be  
true. . .

Yet the issue is complex. Amplification has been embraced by notable  
composers as a 21st-century resource of great subtlety and artistic  
potential. When an opera score includes electronic instruments in an  
orchestra, why not electronically enrich the voices of singers, if the  
composer so chooses? John Adams and Osvaldo Golijov routinely write  
operatic works that use amplification, and a Golijov piece will be  
performed on Thursday’s program, with amplification provided.

The fear is that these sound systems are encroaching on the art.  
Houses and halls from Brooklyn to Berlin have used various kinds of  
sound systems for certain performances. What is next? If electronics  
can achieve the desired balances in Mr. Adams’s “Doctor Atomic,” why  
not give a lift to the light voices of a young, attractive cast in  
Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”? . . .

The expanded orchestra pit now has an air space under its floor: the  
players will be able to hear one another better, and the conductor  
will be able to control balances and give the orchestra presence in  
the hall without undue volume. . .