The new Calderwood Performance Hall is an airy, sleekly modern space that feels worlds away from the cloistered confines of the Tapestry Room. Its shell is essentially a concrete and steel cube, its perimeter lined on four sides with three levels of balconies, each featuring only a single row of seats. There is no stage; the musicians play on a floor made of Alaskan yellow cedar, with two rows of audience seats surrounding them on all sides for a total capacity of almost 300. The space is capped with a skylight, a touch that is not to be taken for granted. One of architect Renzo Piano’s earliest ideas was to build the entire hall underground.
Besides the expense of dealing with a high water table, Hawley didn’t think an underground hall sounded “very Gardner,’’ so Piano suggested a hall with a stage and very steeply raked seating. Gardner music director Scott Nickrenz had strong opinions on that, too. “I didn’t want raked seats,’’ he recalled, “I didn’t want people lined up and staring at the artists. The feature I kept hammering was that I wanted the audience to share the musical experience - to look across and see the other people. I also said I want the artist to feel embraced, to feel hugged. Then one day I woke up at 3 in the morning and said, ‘Oh, I got it! I want a concert hall without a stage. You will be sitting on the stage.’ ’’
Piano’s team ran with the request and came up with the visually striking cube-shaped design. Of course the most crucial detail of any concert space is how it sounds. After decades of performances in an acoustically challenged location - the tapestries stole from the sound what they gave to the atmosphere - the museum now finally has a space designed for the performance of music. Working closely with Piano was the Japanese acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota, whose other halls include the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Suntory Hall in Tokyo.
