When concert halls around the country shuttered their doors and gulped with anxiety about the pandemic future — this was March 2020, not that anyone has forgotten — Martha Gilmer saw an opportunity.
Since taking over as chief executive of the San Diego Symphony in 2014, Gilmer had as one of her three big goals a major renovation of the orchestra’s Jacobs Music Center in downtown San Diego. With the hall sitting empty and the prospects for reopening soon dimming by the week, Gilmer said, “We kind of put our foot on the gas.”
Audiences will experience the stunning results Sept. 28 when conductor Rafael Payare and his orchestra launch their 2024-25 season in a program designed to showcase their new “instrument.”
Gilmer and her team recently gave an extensive tour of the reborn hall, and the grinding cacophony of final construction was still in the air. New chairs were being unboxed onstage as we entered, to Gilmer’s delight: “I’ve been waiting 10 years for new orchestra chairs,” she exclaimed.
The changes inside Jacobs are vivid, starting with the aesthetic: Cool blue chairs have replaced the imposing sea of red, with a much more natural curve and slope for sight lines to the stage and vastly improved lighting illuminating the ornate murals and facades. In addition to safety-related improvements such as air filtration and ADA seating, new amenities for musicians and visiting artists backstage include green rooms, guest artist suites, practice rooms, instrument lockers and a new music library, as well as new staircases and elevators.
All told, the renovation cost $125 million.
With so many orchestras and arts organizations struggling financially during and after the pandemic, how did San Diego pull it off? Gilmer points to a framed photo on her desk of Irwin Jacobs and his late wife, Joan.
“They have changed the fortune of this orchestra,” she said, referring to the $120-million donation they made in 2002 — the largest ever to a U.S. orchestra — that funded an endowment. Jacobs, an engineer who co-founded Qualcomm, has been a major philanthropist in his adopted city, where he started teaching at UC San Diego in the 1960s.
“Joan and I had the opportunity during many business trips around the world to hear music performed in many of the great concert halls,” Jacobs said via email. “We felt our audience and musicians deserved a great hall.”
The couple continued to donate annually and have significantly supported the renovation campaign, although the symphony declined to specify how much. The rest was privately funded by other donors.
Audience members had long complained about lousy acoustics under the balcony overhang and bad views from many seats, especially at the top. Musicians coped with a byzantine backstage area that felt like a cramped obstacle course, with percussion instruments piled in a corner. The legs of the temporary orchestra shell earned the nickname “shin-busters.” Awkward staircases and walkways felt like safety hazards, and musicians had few good places to practice. Guest performers had to walk out to steel catwalk stairs and down four floors from the artist entrance.
Still, the uniqueness of the building’s quirky history was part of its allure. It was built in 1929 as the Fox Theatre — the third-biggest movie palace on the West Coast when it opened with visiting Hollywood royalty, including Jackie Coogan and Joan Crawford.
The circus movie “Freaks” had its world premiere here in 1932, and with its expensive organ, rococo interior design and grand chandeliers, the Fox was the local destination to see movies during Hollywood’s Golden Age.
It later was home to live productions of Neil Simon plays and touring musicals, and in the 1970s and ’80s, it hosted concerts by Merle Haggard and Count Basie. The San Diego Symphony — the oldest orchestra in California, whose prior homes had been the US Grant hotel and the Civic Theatre — bought the Fox in 1984. It reopened as Symphony Hall the following fall.
For all its flaws as a classical music hall, it was one of the best preserved theaters from the old Fox chain — which sealed the deal for Gilmer and the board to “to really embrace the past,” she said, and to renovate rather than build new.
Conversations about renovating began in earnest in April 2018. The first contact was acoustical designer Paul Scarbrough, then the Santa Monica architectural firm HGA.
The theater had, over the years, been encased by the 34-story Symphony Towers and the Marriott Vacation Club, with a giant parking garage overhead. Architects realized that dead space on all sides could be used creatively: All the HVAC and electrical equipment could be moved from the basement and suspended in the gap above the building, and the unused side gaps, all five floors, could be reclaimed for the orchestra.
When Payare began his tenure as music director in fall 2019, he and Gilmer surveyed the musicians about their hoped-for changes to the hall. Payere would often say, “The sky’s the limit, guys.”
“He doesn’t see barriers,” Gilmer said. “He only sees opportunities.”
The new conductor was just five weeks into his debut season and still based in Berlin when the world came crashing to a halt. He flew to San Diego right before travelers from some countries were prevented from entering the United States, because “I know how important it is for the musicians to be connected,” Payare said.
In the face of a pandemic, he was asking himself “how we could make sure that we could still keep the flame of hope alive.”
The first beacon was one of Gilmer’s other big goals: an outdoor venue to serve as the San Diego Symphony’s version of the Hollywood Bowl. The Rady Shell, which had already been in the works, opened in summer 2021, providing the orchestra a safe place to play year-round, with a beautiful view next to San Diego Bay.
With the hall dormant, construction went into high gear. The entire audience area was gutted and rebuilt, new foundations were poured in the basement and spaces were waterproofed. No longer will buckets have to be brought into the guest conductor’s suite whenever it rains.
New opera box seats were added. The original chandeliers were sent out for refurbishment. The ceiling was raised, and a choral terrace was built onstage so the orchestra can perform Mahler’s third symphony. Sophisticated tuning and acoustic setups were installed — including a fly system overhead and modular door panels surrounding the stage — that will allow for much greater control over sound at different types of concerts.
One by one, items on the musicians’ wish list were ticked off.
“San Diego,” Gilmer said, “is a city that, I feel, its future is greater than its past.”
If nothing else, the future is poised to sound much better. Now, she and Payare face the pivotal question — the same one soon to be faced by the St. Louis Symphony, which is renovating its 100-year-old hall.
If you build it, will they come?
