During the pandemic | The New York Philharmonic Orchestra gets a makeover

(New York) The COVID-19 pandemic has been a severe ordeal for the live performance industry, but the New York Philharmonic Orchestra has taken the opportunity to accelerate the renovation of its setting and its acoustics, a project in progress at $550 million.

Inside Lincoln Center, on the island of Manhattan, the bowels of the prestigious David Geffen Hall concert hall, where the “Phil” has performed since 1962, were clearly visible, during a visit by AFP .

More than 600 workers and technicians work permanently on site, on a rotating shift system, six days a week and with overtime, to transform the compound into a state-of-the-art space, more accessible and equipped with better acoustic.

Objective: to bring one of the oldest and most renowned musical institutions in the United States back to its setting in the summer for the first tests, before an official reopening in October.

The very first discussions on the need to renovate the hall date back to 1995, but the project dragged on for a long time. Paradoxically, the pandemic, by forcing the David Geffen Hall to close to the public, accelerated the process.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We could do something positive with this disaster,” Phil director Deborah Borda told AFP.

The new venue will feature a lobby twice the size, a sidewalk studio for performances visible from the street, and improved acoustics made possible by redesigned wall surfaces and a raised stage ceiling.

The renovation reduces capacity from 2,738 to 2,200 seats, but visibility will be improved for almost all seats in the hall, and some audience members will be placed behind the orchestra, providing a unique view.

Cost of the operation: 550 million dollars, financed by fundraising, in particular from the one whose name the room bears, the magnate of the music industry David Geffen.

Since the fall, the orchestra, which resumed its concerts after the pandemic, had to find new spaces within Lincoln Center.

For the president of the cultural center Henry Timms, the pandemic offered an opportunity: “rather than taking four years, (the construction site) could take two years”.

And in a city hard hit by COVID-19, with a spring of 2020 where everything came to a standstill with hundreds dying every day at the height of the crisis, “it would be a powerful symbol of our confidence” in New York, he adds.