Carnegie Hall - Acoustics

by Eddie Ciletti

I had a client (in the nineties) who had a home studio in his apt in NYC - upper west side? He had an AMPEX 1200 and a Tascam 3500 mixer. Irrelevant to the story, perhaps, but he was a union stage hand at Carnegie Hall.

He told me the story of how the Carnegie rebuild had alltered the acoustics - on stage - as the musicians were complaining about their ability to feel tempo through the floor. Here's the official word from the wiki page...

"The renovation was not without controversy. Following completion of work on the main auditorium in 1986, there were complaints that the famous acoustics of the hall had been diminished. Although officials involved in the renovation denied that there was any change, complaints persisted for the next nine years. In 1995, the cause of the problem was discovered to be a slab of concrete under the stage. The slab was subsequently removed."

As I was told, the original stage construction plans did not exist, the only references were pictures from that time. Apparently, Italian artisans had built the stage as per 'the way it was done,' and the end result was that the stage was a major contribution to both the acoustics and - in a way one might never have thought - to the way musicians 'communicated.'

Eddie Ciletti