Ferguson Center for the Arts at CNU

Sounds good

BY DAVID NICHOLSON
247-4794

August 8, 2004

NEWPORT NEWS -- Describing Christopher Newport University's new performing hall as a "concrete bunker" could only come from the man who knows it from the inside out.

The interior walls of the 440-seat Music and Theatre Hall in the Ferguson Center for the Arts look like thick, gleaming wood. But Timothy Gulsrud raps the surface to reveal it's actually a thin wood veneer solidly attached to a 4-foot-thick wall of concrete.

"In a lot of ways, it's like a bunker, which protects the inside from the intrusion of noise from the outside," says Gulsrud, who works for Kirkegaard Associates, the Denver firm hired to design the acoustics for the new hall.

The first phase of the Ferguson center, which includes the music and theater hall, studio theater, classrooms and technical support spaces, will be ready in the fall.

In June, Gulsrud and his Kirkegaard co-workers were in town to test the acoustics in the newly constructed hall. For the first session, the Virginia Symphony agreed to rehearse in the hall so that the team could conduct tests with live music.

While the musicians played Mozart and Handel, the Kirkegaard team moved throughout the near empty hall to hear how the orchestra sounded from several different vintage points. At one point, Gulsrud even took a seat in the rear of the orchestra.

The next morning, the consultants were back in the hall for another round of tests. In this session, a 12-sided loudspeaker was attached to a
pole stand in the center of the stage; then, several microphones were placed onstage and in the orchestra and balcony.

Gulsrud sent a "chirp," a tone sweeping from high to low frequencies, throughout the hall and recorded it with microphones. These chirps will be fed into a computer and processed to get an overall reading of the hall's acoustics.

Acoustics is a branch of physics dealing with the transmission of sound. But the science can be frustratingly inexact, especially when you're trying to fine-tune for an orchestra or other musical ensemble.

"There's a lot of subtlety in music," says Gulsrud. "The sound can be crisp or warm, so it's very difficult to corroborate what you measure objectively to these subjective individual responses.

"Can you hear the violins over the brass? There's no number you can assign to balance. That measurement doesn't exist."

Good acoustics not only means that the audience can hear better, but that the players can hear each other onstage, which results in better ensemble playing. Beverly Baker, the symphony's principal violist, wanted more opportunity to play in the hall before deciding on the quality of its sound. But she liked what she heard after one rehearsal.

"In comparison to every other place that we've played, it's definitely an improvement," she says. "Generally, it felt pretty good. It also looks professional, and that helps."

Principal oboist Sherrie Aguirre agreed, saying, "We're always welcoming good halls, so I'm thrilled that CNU is doing it right. It was extremely loud and bright. I love it when the sound comes back to you, and it certainly did."

The Ferguson complex was designed by the architectural firm headed by I.M Pei. Because Kirkegaard was brought in at the very beginning of this project, says Gulsrud, the odds were increased for a successful project.

"When we talk about acoustics, the other important aspects are the control of noise," says Gulsrud. "We spend a lot of effort making sure the heating/air- conditioning system is quiet."

One way to do that is to install larger air ducts so that the quantity of air moves through them more slowly and makes less noise, he says. Floors are left mostly uncarpeted, and chairs are tested in a laboratory where people sit in them and get out of them.

Because the hall will be used for a variety of musical and theater events, the acoustics must be as flexible as possible, says Eric Rosenberg of Kirkegaard.
"The requirements for orchestra and speech are different," says Gulsrud. "Reverberation contributes to an overall sense of warmth to the sound, which is desirable for a choir. For theater, you need to tone the room down."

Despite the sophisticated acoustical equipment, he points out that "our primary instruments are always our ears.

"My background is in music and physics," says Gulsrud, who sings in his church choir in Boulder, Colo., where his office is located. "It's a common thread of people in our firm. We all have a passion for music. Almost everyone has a connection to it."