Rocky Mountain High

Music, applause as Denver's Performing Arts Center opens

Ask most Americans for a quick word association with Denver and back is likely to come the Broncos, the "Mile High City," Coors beer. Cultural attractions do not readily come to mind. In the theater world Denver is known as a "split-week town." That is no designation for any self-respecting metropolis; it means that road-show companies calculate that they cannot get seven days out of the box office. The city can be somewhat prouder of its symphony orchestra. It has survived and grown modestly over 44 years, but has never made the big time, partly because it has been performing in a hall whose acoustics make anything, even Mozart, sound like a band concert.

But stay tuned, folks. With one bold stroke, Denver is bidding to put itself on the performing-arts map. When the multimillion-dollar Denver Center for the Performing Arts is complete, it will include the 2,700-seat concert hall just finished, a building containing three theaters and a cinema, and a huge parking garage, all of them adjacent to the existing auditorium and sports arena.

For the late '70s, this plan is nearly Napoleonic in scope, and it does not lack for skeptics. The massive culture enclaves of the past two decades, symbolized by Manhattan's Lincoln Center, are causing financial trouble for the arts organizations they house. Denver may also learn about the perils of overbuilding. But last week there was no time for such pessimism. The first new structure of the center, the Boettcher Concert Hall, opened to raves from the public and from music and architecture critics. The three days of programs became the kind of celebration that happens when a city decides to do something worthwhile but risky, something that it maybe could get by without, and then makes it come alive as a new source of community pride.

For Donald Seawell, 65, chairman of the center and also president and chairman of the Denver Post, the opening was the first payoff on a huge investment--if not a gamble. Says Seawell, 'The Rocky Mountain states have always been have-nots as far as culture is concerned. Our planners say that Denver itself will double its population, to more than 3 million, in 20 years. They also say that if we tried to build this complex 20 years from now, the cost would be about $1 billion. It will take time, but we are looking for excellence in everything."

Center planners, directed by Architects Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, have obviously made a hard assessment of existing cultural complexes and learned from what has been done elsewhere. There will not be any "Mussolini Modern" jokes about Denver. No extra dollars have been spent on grandiose exteriors. "Poor old Lincoln Center," says Roche. "Many arts organizations cannot afford the operating costs of large, monumental buildings."

If Denver's venture does run into trouble, the gags will probably be about crystal palaces. Though the buildings are no-nonsense functional, the place will still be a local monument because of its lofty "Galleria." This 76-ft.-high arched glass roof, only one section of which is up, was inspired by the ethereal vaulting in Milan's Galleria. Denver's will unify the complex, shelter the promenades and impart its own blend of airiness and intimacy to the neighborhood.

Boettcher Hall is typical of the Denver spirit. Part of the exterior walls is also glass, but there is nothing lyrical about them. They reveal a lobby that flaunts not marble or chrome but the building's functional and mechanical workings. On opening night, concertgoers could be heard arranging "to meet up at the duct" at intermission. A few thought they had come in the wrong way and wandered backstage.

Once beyond the pipes and valves, a wholly new experience awaits U.S. audiences. Boettcher is the first "surround" music hall in the country, with 360DEG seating around the orchestra. There are a few such auditoriums elsewhere--in Mexico City and Berlin--but orthodox acousticians still believe that the best sound is heard in long, narrow rectangular spaces. In Boettcher, there are "terraces" at several levels from which the audience can watch the players from different angles and much more intimately; no seat is farther than 85 ft. from the stage and most are within 65 ft.

The acoustics are very good, and that is a triumph as well as a vindication for Acoustician Christopher Jaffe, 50. The problem with a circular design is that sound diffuses quickly, bounces around, losing clarity and focus. Jaffe, with the Boettcher architects, Hardy, Holzman, Pfeiffer Associates, has managed to create a lush, integral sound by using such devices as 106 acrylic "reflector" discs suspended from the ceiling and a huge vault below the stage. There are some minor, doubtless correctable difficulties. The bass is not quite rich enough. When Van Cliburn sat down on opening night to slam his way through his trademark concerto, Tchaikovsky's first, he was drowned out in one area of the hall whenever the orchestra joined in: his notes were blocked by the raised top of the Steinway. Not even Jaffe thought of everything.

The next day there were no slips. The world premiere of John Green's Mine Eyes Have Seen, a huge, jazzy work that might better be called Mine Ears Have Heard, had both thunder and clarity. It got a standing ovation. Said Jaffe with some understatement: "That was a great big body of sound."

The musicians love the Boettcher. The orchestra is understaffed (83 members, compared with Boston's 105), and they play ploddingly. But as French Horn Player John Zirbel notes, "we will improve almost at once because for the first time we can hear ourselves play. That means better attack and intonation."

There are other problems. The orchestra is about to lose its permanent conductor. Brian Priestman is leaving this year, and there is no replacement in sight. More seriously, the symphony has been through a bitter lockout in which the issue was a big cutback in the number of weeks per season (and therefore in pay).

To some Denverites that is more than an untimely irony. Financing for the center is, inevitably, complicated. It depends on city bond issues, private funds, including grants from the Boettcher Foundation and especially from two foundations endowed by the Bonfils family, who got rich in publishing. Sea well, ever a pivotal Denver figure, is president of both. Many people, including City Councilwoman Cathy Donahue, are afraid that eventually Denver will be left with much of the bill: "It's simply too expensive." Mayor William McNichols admits that there is strain: "We've had sessions that would match whatever Muhammad Ali did at his best --hard and vicious." But, he adds, "if it weren't for Bonfils and Seawell, we would still be arguing about the merits of the center."

Seawell insists there will be sufficient money. Heaven knows he is no mad builder like Ludwig II of Bavaria. The center's theater building, now under construction, will almost comply with Moliere's notion that all drama needs is a platform and a passion or two. It will house three theaters, none with a conventional proscenium. Seawell called in Gordon Davidson of Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum as consultant. He has come up with a plan to ally his own successful theater with Denver's troupe to be. "Time is the hardest thing to buy," says Davidson, 44, whose theater won a Tony Award last year. "While its own resident company is evolving, Denver can borrow scripts, artists and staff from us." The theaters, which are scheduled to open next year, will not always be full during the first years. Says Davidson: "It takes time, too, to enlarge and train audience support."

He is almost wistful at the opportunities in Colorado. "There is some naivete in Denver," he says. "But there is adventure and openness, and a feeling of not having seen it all, a sense of hunger. It is true that art is international and timeless. But theater also has to do with roots, with expressing the specific character of a place and the common life that is shared. I think Denver might just do it."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.