Page 46 - PDF Flip TR Program Demo

46
About Tippet Rise
We experimented with room shapes in the Arup Sound Lab in New York, which can simulate the sound of any dimensions entered into its computer. As you move a wall, your chosen piano or quartet sound changes to reflect the dynamics of your altered room. In this way, you can hear the room before you build it.
Rather than a larger hall, which would have sounded more distant, we chose the closer jewelbox dimen- sions. We then visited similar rooms in Europe to understand the reality of the sound. Arup arranged for us to visit Sevenoaks School, where they had designed a modified Snape Maltings roof in a lovely small hall. The school staged a concert for us with a wonderful young pianist, so we could hear the acoustics with an audience present. By visiting Snape Maltings in Suffolk itself, we were able to inspect
the hall design with the Arup acousticians who had worked on it and understand how to create a room with intensely enveloping acoustics.
We revisited with Arup performance spaces around London which they had designed with a Snape Maltings roof, such as Wigmore Hall and the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. Wigmore’s perfect shoebox dimensions influenced the shape of Olivier Hall strongly.
We have long attended the Glyndebourne Opera’s summer productions in the beautiful hall which Arup designed for the Christies. This 1,200-seat hall was the first to suggest that modern spaces did not need to be as huge as traditional civic trophy halls, allowing for more detailed and nuanced productions, as the sound would not be lost in cavernous hangars.
Arup has built most of the significant acoustic opera and concert spaces in the United Kingdom, as well as the Sydney Opera House, the Oslo Opera House, and Iceland’s Opera House. They build dozens more every year. Here are a few of their current projects: www.arupassociates.com/en/projects.
Peter had lived in Boston for over a decade while
he studied music with Russell Sherman, and
went often to friends’ concerts in Jordan Hall and Symphony Hall. We had lived in New York and often went to concerts at Carnegie Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, the Met, and elsewhere. While we lived in Paris for nine years, we went to concerts at the Rothschild Museum in Paris, the Salle Gaveau, la Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Opéra Comique, and other fine halls around Europe such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Zurich Tonhalle.
Snape Maltings Concert Hall , UK
Music Room, Esterházy Palace