Orlando’s Steinmetz Hall has just been ranked by Architectural Digest as one of the top eleven most beautiful theaters in the world.
But the soaring ceilings and gorgeous ovals of cherry wood designed by architect Barton Myers are not the only thing that makes the Steinmetz unique. Not only is the theater acoustically perfect – it’s also a multi-form space that accommodates actors, orchestras, and all kinds of audiences.
The Steinmetz opened in its home – the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts – in January 2022 after more than a decade of delays, kicked off by the 2008 financial crisis and dragged out more by COVID. Its opening week showcased its versatility, from an opening night featuring 250 Central Florida artists to a short residency by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London.
I went to the Steinmetz after the Architectural Digest article for a tour and a brush-up on Steinmetz stories. I met Dr. Phillips Center President and CEO Kathy Ramsberger in the lobby.
Kathy Ramsberger:
When we started this journey in 2003, one of our goals was to build something that the region and the state and country would be proud of, and our goal was to build one of the best concert halls and theaters in the world. And with Steinmetz Hall, we had the chance to do that. And our other theaters are pretty remarkable, too. But Steinmetz Hall, just because of the acoustical achievement we managed and the way that the building was designed as a multi-form hall, really got the recognition that we were looking for.
Nicole Darden Creston:
Can you tell me a little bit about the architectural goals?
Kathy Ramsberger:
The center, when we built it, we thought, "Is this an opportunity that we could evolve an industry?" You know, these buildings don't get torn down - once they're up, they're there for hundreds of years. And there are not many that are built. Most cities, once they have a performing arts center, that's it. And so ours was kind of a chance to be the next generation of art centers, and we had the chance to listen to a lot of art centers. But our mission was always, "How do we break down the elitism around the arts?" And so the Dr. Phillips Center was designed to be a very approachable, welcoming place where we actually program it "at risk." We don't wait for the call to rent it. We actually seek different types of work that we can present here, so all different audiences come. But the whole front of house is designed where people see each other. We're the only arts center in the world that people come 90 minutes before a show. And it's because of how we did our lobby. So the lobby was just as important to us as the theaters, as important as the back of house. So our approach everywhere is anybody who comes towards the Arts Center, no matter if they're an artist, or they're a parent, or students which are running through the building today, or guests, donors, people that work here, anyone, that they feel that this is a place that everybody can be proud of, and everybody has the chance to be here. Then - the quality standards that we put into each hall. Every hall that we have, there's something very unique that's different from other art centers.
Nicole Darden Creston:
Then, it was time to meet with Director of Production D.W. Phineas Perkins for a tour inside the Steinmetz, where he explained the world class tech as we stood on the stage.
D.W. Phineas Perkins:
The Steinmetz Hall is a very flexible space, it's a multi-form space. It's unlike any venue in the world because we can change configurations from proscenium to concert hall. But in the house itself, all the seats can change to different configurations, we can change to a flat floor all the way out for big banquets, we can create a small pit or a large pit by taking up the first three to five rows and flipping the flat up or down in concert configuration. The same three to five rows can be raised up as a stage extension for ballet. The hall itself is acoustically perfect, they like to say. In my work, there is no acoustically perfect, but we can change acoustic absorption which does make it more perfect in most places. So with the concert shell in place, which is the big cherry structure behind us - it weighs about a million pounds - it can roll downstage and connect with the rest of the building. So the proscenium arch raises up 75 feet in the air, which allows the concert shell to come and attach. It then creates one solid volume of space, that if you're here talking at my level, a person in the back row can hear you about as clearly as you can hear me now. When we were doing acoustical testing in here and the microphone was 50 feet away, somebody's stomach rumbled and we had to restart the testing, because it picked up on microphone and went to 21 decibels. When we're here, just the room, 18 decibels is the noise level of the room. Human hearing starts at 20. So that's why we consider it acoustically perfect.
Nicole Darden Creston:
It's useful and it's beautiful, and that is not an easy thing to do with a theater. [laughter]
D.W. Phineas Perkins:
I mean, theaters you can design by just, you know, putting lipstick on a pig. [laughter] You can paint things, make it look pretty. We've gone beyond that because of the beautiful cherry wood, the brass, the copper that's in the building is the visual appearance. Wood is good for acoustics because it helps reflect well. The knee-walls and the facades of the various tiers are a wave-like form which look great, but they also help reflect the sound a little bit better. We cross divides of what it is, because it's a proscenium theater, it's a concert hall, it's a banquet hall if we flip everything in flat seats...so that's why it's a multi-form space that you could just set up to support the different uses.
Nicole Darden Creston:
It sounds like they pretty much thought of everything. Is there anything you can think of that they didn't?
D.W. Phineas Perkins:
If you ever talk to an engineer, every project, once they build it, [they think], "Oh, we should have done this, we should have done that.." [laughter] How would that affect the acoustics - there's not really anything we could do better. We have reached an N1 rating, which is, it's 18 decibels when everything's quiet. The LED lighting in here doesn't make noise. There are certain light fixtures we don't allow to be used in concert configuration because of the fan noise, which is how we maintain the N1 rating. How do you improve on that? Visually, it's a beautiful room. Architectural Digest named us one of the 11 most beautiful theaters in the world last week. So how do you improve upon that? So Steinmetz Hall, visually and from a performer and audience standpoint, it's about as good as you can get.
Nicole Darden Creston:
Back with President and CEO Kathy Ramsberger in the soaring silent hall, we talked about how the tough road to the Steinmetz's completion became a path to global and community recognition.
I know that I've been around long enough to know that it was pushed back because of the 2008 financial crisis, and you were part of the fight to continue to make this happen. So do you feel a little more connected to it?
Kathy Ramsberger:
You know, I think when we started the project back in 2003, and then the funding got approved in 2007...sometimes you don't know what you deserve. And I think our city thought we would be okay, if we just did something that was good. But our board wanted to do something great, because they knew it was going to be here forever when you're building a legacy project. And I thank goodness for our board, which includes both Mayor Dyer and Mayor Demings [of Orlando and Orange County, respectively], and other mayors under the leadership of both Jim Pugh and Ed Timberlake [former and current Board Chairs] and others, to have that foresight to say, "Take the heat, keep the passion, be persistent, do the hard work now so we can have something." Because you can't go back and make a theater perfect. Very hard to do it. Other theaters have done it. And they put a great deal of funding in there, and it comes back, and it's not quite perfect. It was very difficult to explain what we were going to achieve and the results. And so now that the city has realized that great partnerships achieve great things, and we do deserve these wonderful things. We can do it.
Nicole Darden Creston:
There's a deep community investment. It's sort of a personal love.
Kathy Ramsberger:
We had someone come to visit us who's a business leader. And he came in and we were talking and he says, "You know, I have been driving by this place for 15 years and watching this go up, I cannot believe we did it. We did it." And I said to him, "Well, thank you." I said, "Have you ever been here before?" He said, "No. This is my first time." What was so important about that is he felt as a community member that this was something that he was proud of, and he said we did it. And we have 17,000 donors every year we have six or 700,000 people that visit here. And a lot of people feel like they have ownership in this because it was hard to do. And they followed it. And then they come, and they feel like it's theirs. Not just the guests, but the donors and the artists, our employees, our colleagues, our volunteers. It's a nice thing that everybody feels like they own a part of it.
Nicole Darden Creston:
I'm not sure that everyone consciously understands the quality of the sound, the quality of the experience, every nuance of it, but they on some level will appreciate it most certainly in the overall quality of the experience.
Kathy Ramsberger:
Maybe they'll realize that this is an approachable place. And this is something that they'll like and maybe they'll try a different type of artistic experience. You know, not everybody looks the same when they come in here, and we like that even more. We've programmed, we've had Bob Dylan here the same night that we had an opera, and so you can imagine that audience out front was just a mixed crowd, and it all worked. It's perfect.
