The Walt Disney Concert Hall at 111 South Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, California. It is the fourth hall of the Los Angeles Music Center and was designed by the renowned architect Frank Gehry. It was inaugurated on October 24, 2003. The venue, with a capacity for 2,265 people, is bounded by Hope Street, Grand Avenue, and 1st and 2nd Streets.
Lillian Disney, widow of Walt Disney, made an initial donation of $50 million in 1987 to build a performance venue as a gift to the city of Los Angeles and as a tribute to Walt Disney’s devotion to the arts and the city. The building designed by Frank Gehry—very similar to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao—was opened on October 24, 2003.
Originally, Frank Gehry had designed the Disney Concert Hall with a stone facade because “at night the stone would glow,” he told interviewer Barbara Isenberg. “The Disney Hall would have looked beautiful at night in stone. It would have been great. The metal darkens at night. I begged them. No, after seeing Bilbao, they wanted it in metal.”
Both Gehry’s architecture and the acoustics of the concert hall, designed by Minoru Nagata, the final completion overseen by Nagata’s assistant and protege Yasuhisa Toyota, have been praised, in contrast to its predecessor Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
The construction of the concert hall itself stalled from 1994 to 1996 due to a lack of fundraising. Additional funds were needed as the construction cost of the final project far exceeded the original budget. Plans were revised, and in a cost-saving move, the originally designed stone exterior was replaced with a less expensive stainless steel skin. The groundbreaking for the hall took place in December 1999.
When completed in 2003, the project ultimately cost about $274 million; only the parking cost $110 million. The rest of the total cost was covered by private donations, with the Disney family’s contribution estimated at $84.5 million, and an additional $25 million from The Walt Disney Company. To put the cost into perspective, the three existing halls of the Music Center cost $35 million in the 1960s (about $190 million today).
When construction finished in the spring of 2003, the Philharmonic postponed its grand opening until the fall and used the summer to let the orchestra and the Master Chorale adapt to the new hall. Performers and critics agreed that the extra time was worth it. During summer rehearsals, a few hundred VIPs were invited to sit, including donors, board members, and journalists. Writing about these rehearsals, Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed penned the following chronicle:
“When the orchestra finally had its next [rehearsal] at Disney, it was to rehearse Ravel’s exquisite ballet Daphnis and Chloé. … This time, the hall miraculously came to life. Before, the sound of the orchestra, as wonderful as it was, had felt confined to the stage. Now, a new auditory dimension had been added, and every square inch of Disney’s air vibrated merrily. Toyota says he had never experienced such an acoustic difference between a first and second rehearsal in any of the halls he designed in his native Japan. Salonen could hardly believe his ears. To his astonishment, he found wrong notes in the printed Ravel parts that have been in the musicians’ stands for decades. The orchestra had owned these scores for decades, but at the Chandler, no conductor had heard the inner details well enough to notice the mistakes.”
The hall received glowing approval from nearly all its listeners, including its performers. In an interview, Esa-Pekka Salonen, former music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, said, “The sound, of course, was my biggest concern, but now I’m totally happy, and so is the orchestra,” and later remarked, “Everyone can now hear how L.A. Phil is supposed to sound.”
The walls and ceiling of the hall are finished with Douglas fir, while the floor is finished with oak. Columbia Showcase & Cabinet Co. Inc., based in Sun Valley, CA, produced all ceiling panels, wall panels, and architectural millwork for the main auditorium and lobbies.
The hall’s design included a large concert organ, completed in 2004, which was used in a special concert for the American Guild of Organists National Convention in July 2004. The organ had its public debut in a recital performed by Frederick Swann on September 30, 2004, and its first public performance with the Philharmonic two days later in a concert with Todd Wilson. The organ’s facade was designed by architect Frank Gehry in consultation with organ consultant and tonal designer Manuel Rosales.
This building is highly recognizable in films such as ‘Collateral’ (2004). It is seen when the main protagonist of the movie, Max Durocher (Jamie Foxx), takes a couple (Debi Mazar and Bodhi Elfman) who are arguing in his taxi. The 2007 film ‘Fracture’ has a scene at the Disney Concert Hall. In the early moments of Season 6 of the series ’24’, it is also featured.
This building was also used in the movie Iron Man (2008) briefly for the Stark Industries party. The ending of the 2008 film “Get Smart” was filmed at the Concert Hall. Both the interior and exterior of the building were extensively filmed during the production of the 2009 movie ‘The Soloist’. It was also the filming location for several scenes in the later seasons of ‘Glee’ as part of the fictional NYADA (New York Academy of Dramatic Arts).
The Opening Concert of the Concert Hall in the 2014-15 season, a tribute to the legendary American composer John Williams, was recorded on September 24, 2014, for the television special ‘A John Williams Celebration Gala’.
