Tuning UTB-TSC's Arts Center

"Can you hear the bass?" music professor Terry Tomlin asked within the Arts Center’s warmth and richness — only matched by the melodic arrangements of a jazz band that he was directing.

Mark Holden had been listening intently, sitting just several rows from the stage of the center at the University of Texas of Brownsville and Texas Southmost College campus.

"Just fine," Holden said earlier this month, as he responded to the quality of tone and sound emanating from center stage.

Minutes earlier, jazz band members had prepared for their performance.

Now it was the Arts Center’s turn.

And whereas the composition of a guitar and the resonance of its strings, along with the player, bring to life its sound or tone, so did the configuration of the center’s performance hall.

Holden, an acoustician, was at the center to "tune" the performance hall — just as minutes before, the jazz band members had tuned their instruments.

The shape of the walls inside the performance hall, decorated in deep red and golden tones, the ceiling and even the fabrics on the seats, all played a part in developing a tuned hall, Holden said. How the performers are positioned on the stage also affects sound.

Holden, with the acoustics firm of JaffeHolden of Connecticut and California, said that as an acoustician, his role in developing the hall was to be involved in every aspect of its design, "from its initial concepts of what it might be, of the dreams, the visions, the ideas of what it could be, and we get to work on the sound and the way the room is going to feel sonically."

Musicians, actors and performers require a room that responds and supports their performances.

"The room must be a room that engages the audience and supports the performer so that together, there is this wonderful sense of intimacy, collaboration and love. It’s really all about emotions, what we are creating here is emotional response," Holden said.

Acoustics is a marriage of physics, construction and emotion.

"We are dealing with wave theory and sound and physics. We’re dealing with the way the sound moves in a room, the propagation of sound energy and the sound pressure variations within a confined space," Holden said.

"What we try to do is control the sound energy dispersion from the stage as it is moving to the audience area. We can adjust the ceiling acoustic banners overhead that can be extended or retracted to help control reverberation and the way sound persists in a room," he explained.

Holden was at the center to test the acoustics in the hall. "We are listening to the room. Up to this point, it’s been all theoretical, all on paper and computer modeling. It’s all done in the abstract. This is the first time that we actually hear sound on stage," he said.

He liked what we heard: "We are very encouraged. We have some tweaking to do. We have some minor adjustments to do. That is to be expected. We are feeling very good about where we are right now."

Studio Red Architects of Houston designed the $25 million, 49,887 square-foot center that New Jersey-based Skanska USA constructed. The center features an 808-seat performance hall with a fully equipped stage designed to accommodate orchestras, operas, and dance and theater productions. It can also accommodate 150 people on stage simultaneously, UTB-TSC pointed out. The project manager was Broaddus & Associates of Austin.

Additionally, the nautilus-shape structure includes five teaching studios, three rehearsal halls, a green room, a patrons’ terrace, and a 5,298 square-foot lobby designed to accommodate receptions and art exhibits.

JaffeHolden has worked on numerous projects, including Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Seattle’s Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall, Ohio’s Schuster Performing Arts Center, Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, Detroit’s Orchestra Hall, Washington, D.C.’s, Kennedy Center, New York’s Lincoln Center, Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center and The Franklin Institute expansion, and Japan’s Tokyo International Forum.

When UTB-TSC Master Chorale member Ricardo Delgado, 20, walked into the new performance hall, he felt as he did when he performed at the Lila Cockrell Theater in San Antonio.

"When I walked in (the new center), that’s the exact feeling I got, that feeling of excitement and accomplishment . . . it is beautiful and it makes us feel worth more than what we thought," Delgado said.

Delgado was not disappointed after the Master Chorale tested the acoustics.

UTB-TSC’s Fine Arts Chair Dr. Sue Zanne Urbis is both a pianist and clarinetist.

Urbis found it hard to express "the sheer joy that I experienced the first time that I walked in. All I could imagine were all of my wonderful students on stage doing what they do best, which is to perform music."

Juliet V. Garcia, the president of UTB-TSC, said the best response to the Arts Center can be seen in the eyes of students: "They are ecstatic and emotional and they are honored — to have people who think so much of what they can become and that took the time to do something like this."

The center opens its doors in January.

"It will be a magnificent 2010," Garcia said.