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Virginian-Pilot
October 8, 2006
STRIKING A CHORD
BY TERESA ANNAS THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
NEWPORT NEWS — At 8 p.m. on a recent Saturday, patrons still milled in the lobby of the concert hall at Ferguson Center for the Arts.
It was time to strike up the first chord, but Virginia Symphony Orchestra musicians and patrons were stuck in traffic at both tunnels and the James River Bridge.
Still, the mood was more upbeat than perturbed. “This venue is as good as any in the world,” exulted Gayle Rauch of Newport News, waiting with his wife, Judy, in the lobby, an expansive, high-ceilinged room with Italian marble floors and wide staircases.
“Last year, we traveled to Budapest, Prague and Vienna and attended concerts, and we did not hear a better venue. It makes you very proud when you come home and realize that this venue is as good as it gets.”
Last month, the center reached a milestone – the first anniversary for its 1,700-seat concert hall and the second year for its two smaller theaters.
The $55 million center is part of Christopher Newport University, so it also is home to the theater, music and fine-arts departments.
The showplace is visible from Warwick Boulevard, near the entrance to The Mariners’ Museum. On nights when the hall is in use, the lighted colonnade looks like glowing keys on a curved piano, and the five-stories- high concert hall lures like a lantern.
Last year, more than 50 top-drawer acts – from opera singer Andrea Bocelli to bluesman B.B. King – took the stage at CNU’s big hall.
Local groups used that hall, too, notably the Virginia Symphony, which is finding new audiences with regular performances at CNU. The Virginia Arts Festival also staged three programs there in the spring and will co-present “Riverdance” with the center in late May in addition to other 2007 festival programs.
Virginia Ballet Theatre was less pleased with its booking at Ferguson Center. Poor box office for its holiday “Nutcracker” production partly caused the ballet to cancel its spring production of “Cinderella.”
The CNU performing arts series fared well last year, however. Eighty-one percent of all available tickets sold last season, said William Biddle, the center’s executive director.
“That is a very high percentage,” Biddle said, seated in his office in late September. “That’s high for an opening. That’s high for anybody.”
This season, he expects to sell 85 percent of all available tickets for 53 scheduled shows. Acts include guitaristsinger George Benson (Friday), Joffrey Ballet (Nov. 18), Glenn Miller Orchestra (Dec. 16), Whoopi Goldberg (Jan. 12), Soweto Gospel Choir (Feb. 16), Kodo Drummers of Japan (March 11) and The Beach Boys (May 12).
The national average for ticket sales at similar organizations is about 60 percent, said Patrick Madden, vice president for external affairs for Arts Presenters, a national service and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
“That is high,” he said of the Ferguson’s first-year numbers.
Biddle also said box-office revenue covered 77 percent of the center’s operating budget, which last year was $4.5 million. Madden said the industry norm is 50 percent.
Despite frequent backups at the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, 26 percent of all seats were purchased by Southside residents, Biddle said. Peninsula residents accounted for 68 percent of tickets.
Many people probably bought tickets the first year because they were curious about the building, Biddle said. He hopes to draw audiences back by providing what the project’s founders requested: world-class shows.
“To me, world class means different things to different people. As a result, we have a variety of performances, from ballet to bluegrass . That, to me, is what makes a successful arts center.”
The night before the symphony program, a different audience flooded CNU’s grand lobby. Instead of suits and dresses, patrons wore jeans and work shirts to see bluegrass star Ricky Skaggs.
Sandy and Mike Ownbey, who live on a farm in Merry Hill, N.C., showed up more than an hour early. “We came for Ralph Stanley last November,” Mike said.
“The acoustics were wonderful,” said his wife, Sandy.
They hoped they might get a shot of Mike with Skaggs . Sandy clicked through the saved images on her digital camera and found the one of her husband with Stanley, seated together at a record sales counter at last year’s CNU show.
Was it worth the 85-minute drive? “We really enjoy the small setting,” Sandy said.
For the Stanley show, the Ownbeys sat in the parterre, which is seating on the first floor, or orchestra section, but underneath the balcony. “Sound was still good,” Sandy said. “You knew what they were singing, but you couldn’t see their faces real well.”
This time, they had center orchestra seats.
Among the dozen or so audience members interviewed at the bluegrass and symphony concerts, nearly all were impressed with the acoustics.
“Probably any place you sit here, the acoustics are going to be grand,” said Eleanor Long of Newport News, who sat in the parterre for the symphony. “I came twice last year and twice so far this year. Next year, I’m going to get a season ticket.”
JoAnn Falletta, music director for the Virginia Symphony, said CNU’s acoustics are making “an enormous difference” in the development of the orchestra. “I’ve become convinced that orchestras actually grow up in the halls in which they play. Their sounds are formed in the halls.”
At CNU, the musicians “can hear themselves really well, and the hall presents the sound back to them in a really true way. That’s critical. That’s the crux of it: You play better in a great hall.”
Ferguson has become the orchestra’s favorite place to perform, she said.
The previous night, Skaggs used an in-ear microphone, so he couldn’t hear the hall’s natural acoustics – until he took out the mic to sing an a capella hymn.
“Not the best house I’ve ever been in,” he said at a reception. “It’s in the top 15 to 20, and we play a lot of houses.
“I’d love to bring our Christmas tour here.”
Such compliments are music to the ears of architects with Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas and Co. of Norfolk. That firm designed the center, in association with a New Yorkbased company founded by architect I.M. Pei.
Internationally renowned Pei Cobb Freed & Partners has gotten much of the attention regarding the new center. Henry N. Cobb was the lead designer for the big hall and the colonnade, which are the most distinctive features.
“Our firm’s role was everything else,” said Michael Evans, principal architect for the 300,000-square-foot center. The Norfolk firm designed the transformation of Ferguson High, the two other theaters, all the classrooms and support facilities.
Evans’ company also brought together a group of theater design consultants – a team Pei’s firm has employed – with the expertise to make it a top-notch venue. They hired Kirkegaard Associates of Chicago, the acoustics firm that engineered the halls’ sound.
Ted Porter, the Norfolk firm’s project architect, stayed on the job nine years , Evans said. “Ted and many other people put a very large part of their very short careers in that building.”
For its efforts, the firm received the Louis I. Kahn Award from the American School & University magazine, a grand prize from the College Planning & Management magazine and an excellence in design award from the American Institute of Architects, Hampton Roads Chapter.
Evans sees performing arts events as communal gatherings. “The buildings that I think are successful are ones that have this ability to give that group a kind of singular living room.”
He was happy to see that the lobby was neither too full nor too sparse, and that many of the seats were full. He recalled thinking, “How terrific it was that so many of these events are being well-attended, and how important it is for them to be well-attended.”
When a new performing arts venue opens, a region’s arts community can feel a mix of dread and excitement. Arts fans are liable to shift their usual attending habits and visit the new place – see the marble floors, check out the acoustics.
“In the industry, we call it the honeymoon,” said Michael Curry, executive director of The American Theatre in Hampton, which presents a similarly diverse performance series. Last season, he cut back on his offerings, anticipating a drop in attendance.
“I think it was a wise thing to do.” Curry went from 53 shows in 2004-05 to 48 last season in his 400-seat theater. He has 47 scheduled this year.
Ticket sales were slow through the winter but rebounded in the spring, he said, and his summer series sold well.
“People only have a certain amount of discretionary income. The market is oversaturated.”
He’s not sure it’s just Ferguson that caused his theater’s sales downturn. The new Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts offers a varied performing arts series, and next fall The Sandler Center for the Performing Arts will open in Virginia Beach.
In the future, Norfolk may consider a new concert hall, said Nancy Johnson, an assistant city manager. No plans are under way now, she said.
Michael Bollinger, executive director of Suffolk’s new center, said his attitude is: “The more arts there are, the better for this community.”
He noted, however, that there are more performing arts venues in Hampton Roads than in his more populous hometown of St. Louis, Mo.
“There is only so much free time and spare money. For the size of the market, I find it to be a very busy and a very competitive market.”
Among those who feel they’ve benefited from CNU’s new center is Rob Cross, executive director of the Virginia Arts Festival, which is mounted in late spring after the Ferguson series has ended.
“Now we really have a world-class venue” on the Peninsula, he said. He can stage larger, more prestigious programs there, such as last season’s Pilobolus dance company, which drew large crowds.
“I think a lot of people were worried Ferguson would be a little competitive with other stuff going on, but from my perspective, it’s just broadened the audience. They’re creating an audience.”
He believes Biddle has avoided overlapping with other groups’ offerings and that CNU is “not cannibalizing or stepping on the toes of the other big presenters.”
Still, officials at the Virginia Ballet Theatre wondered if Ferguson’s booking of another “Nutcracker” around the same time as theirs last year had any part in their low ticket sales at CNU.
Biddle said the other “Nutcracker” was an academy production and that its audience consisted largely of the dancers’ friends and family. He added, “Every single city has multiple ‘Nutcrackers.’ ”
The loss of that show did not hamper the ballet company, said Frank Bove, Virginia Ballet’s artistic director. His company had full and soldout houses for the recent “Cinderella” at the Roper Performing Arts Center in Norfolk. The ballet has no immediate plans to return to Ferguson.
Biddle said he would love to lure Virginia Opera to the concert hall, and Gus Stuhlreyer, the opera’s general director and CEO, would be pleased to oblige. For now, however, it’s just too complex a proposition to consider, Stuhlreyer said.
“It’s a beautiful facility. My gut tells me there is audience on the Peninsula, but I can’t run an opera company based on my gut.”
Carla Johnson, president and executive director of the Virginia Symphony, said the orchestra performed 20 programs last year at Ferguson and is set for 24 concerts this year.
“We’ve doubled our capacity to sell tickets. We have a new market.”
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The Virginia Symphony Orchestra with a complement of 79 professional musicians under the direction of Grammy-nominated Music Director JoAnn Falletta performs 140 concerts annually, reaching 200,000 concert goers every season in venues throughout the region. Our education and outreach programs reach 53,000 students and adult learners every year. The Virginia Symphony Orchestra is the cultural cornerstone of the performing arts in Hampton Roads.
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