AMY STOCKLEIN
The World Percussion Ensemble fills the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall with sound, while bystanders offer a makeshift audience to help “tune” the new hall.
Anthony Di Sanza stands in front of the stage of the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall clapping his hands in a rhythmic pattern as the sound reverberates throughout the hall.
Rick Talaske, the acoustician who helped design the new Hamel Music Center for UW’s Mead Witter School of Music, is walking around the room listening. “How does it sound?” Talaske asks Di Sanza. “I don’t know, we’ll see!” says Di Sanza, a professor of percussion at UW-Madison’s School of Music.
A handful of people — some reading newspapers or looking at computers — are sitting in the audience of the concert hall. The School of Music invited them to hang out this Thursday morning in mid-September in order to help “tune” the new hall.
“There is a moderate difference in the acoustic environment between an unoccupied hall and an occupied hall,” explains Talaske. “We have designed the seats to minimize that change … but it’s best to have occupied seats when you are evaluating sound quality of a room.”
The first music group of the day, undergraduate and graduate students who make up the World Percussion Ensemble, file onto the stage and take their places in front of microphones and drums. Di Sanza begins jumping up and down, bringing a burst of energy to the room that was absent just moments before. “Good morning,” Di Sanza yells out. “Here we go!”
The Hamel Music Center, which will now serve as the primary performance venue for the School of Music — replacing Mills Hall in the George L. Mosse Humanities Building — is 15 years in the making. “I’ve been on the committee since 2004 when we began fundraising,” says Di Sanza. “I view the opening as one of the most important periods of time for the School of Music, at least as long as I have been on faculty. Our performance spaces until now have been less than stellar.”
Talaske, who works out of his firm in Oak Park, Illinois, helped design the facility. With a master’s of science degree in acoustics from Pennsylvania State University, Talaske says he has loved music his whole life. “My father wanted me to be an engineer,” he says.
But while he was an undergrad at the University of Michigan, his roommate asked him a pressing question: “How we were going to deal with the room acoustic environment of our dorm room?” Talaske remembers. “I didn’t know what he was talking about, but it intrigued me. It’s been all downhill since.”
In a phone interview earlier in the week, Talaske explains that the tuning involves tweaking the settings of the hall’s retractable absorption system, which includes sound-absorbing curtains and banners. “Those curtains and banners are controlled via computer controls and motors and they can be put into position as necessary as to tailor the acoustic environment to the various types of performances that are expected to occur,” Talaske says.
So the ensemble is there to test the settings. Voices and drums fill the still air; the kind of music you can feel pounding in your chest. As quickly as it starts the music stops at Di Sanza’s command. “I know it’s early, but they need us to play,” says Di Sanza. The group takes it from the top, but with more vigor. The song ends and silence fills the hall. “You can hear the singers a lot better than I thought,” says Di Sanza. “That’s the point!” replies Talaske.
660: Capacity of the Hamel’s Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall.
Oct. 25-27: Opening weekend celebration includes numerous free performances
Bembe: Music the World Percussion Ensemble was playing. “It’s traditional folkloric music from Cuba,” says Di Sanza. “A lot of the songs came from Nigeria and traveled to Cuba during the slave trade.”
2 inches: Space between the concert hall and the rest of the building. “The concert hall is its own separate building from the rest of the building,” says Talaske. “The intent is to avoid transfer of vibrations from other parts of the building into the concert hall.”
The Bible, Isthmus: What audience members were reading during the tuning.
