Though it had undergone some piecemeal improvements over the years, it had gone largely unimproved since 1921. “All of the major systems in the building were outdated,” says the executive director of the restored venue, Bruce Marquis. “Electrical services to the building, plumbing, environmental services for audience comfort. Access to the building was limited for both artists and audience. There was no ticket office.” And the list went on. “We had no loading dock, very limited storage capabilities, no freight elevator, no functional dressing rooms on the stage level, outdated rigging and lighting, a minimal sound system. We were very limited in what we could offer visiting performers.” And the acoustics of the hall, originally designed for spoken voice, were inadequate for unamplified music.

Even with all that, says Marquis, “The building was structurally sound, and provided a solid foundation from which to build.”

The transformation of the Temple to the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts (BCPA) began six years ago as part of a civic effort to revitalize the north side of Bloomington's downtown. The city formed the Bloomington Cultural District to assume ownership of the Temple.

When the BCPA (www.artsblooming.com) made its post-renovation debut with a performance by Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra on Sept. 16, 2006, it was with many of the original Temple architectural details preserved. Hammond Beeby Rupert Ainge, Inc. (Chicago) were the architects for the $15 million project that included: updated dressing rooms, stage storage, a loading dock and freight elevator, expanded and remodeled restrooms, a lobby elevator, new seating and a new ticket office and coat room. Completely new mechanical systems were installed — heating, air, electrical, plumbing and a fire sprinkler system. New theatrical systems included rigging and lighting systems with catwalks, a new sound reinforcement system and an acoustic enhancement system for non-amplified sound from JaffeHolden (Norwalk, Conn. and Santa Monica, Calif.).

The Orchestra Shell
“A wide hall produces a low-volume acoustic,” says JaffeHolden acoustics principal, Russell Cooper. “A wide hall lacks the strong lateral reflections that help blend the sounds of an orchestra and create a spacious, enveloping sound environment. The Center was a very low volume hall with a very dry acoustic, not very favorable to symphonic music or acoustic music in general.”

The historic designation of the hall limited JaffeHolden’s ability to alter its acoustic architecturally: plaster walls and a plaster ceiling (approx. 56 feet high) remained basically untouched in the restoration. As a result, says Cooper, the plan from the start for rendering the Center’s acoustics friendly to unamplified music rested with two major elements: the addition of a full concert orchestra shell for the stage and electronic acoustic enhancement for the hall.

“The orchestra shell allows musicians to hear themselves play,” says Cooper. Installation of a 13-piece moveable orchestra shell (from Secoa of Champlin, MN) that fits into the 44’ wide x 26’ high x 40’ deep proscenium opening was the obvious solution.

For several years prior to the renovation, Illinois Wesleyan Civic Orchestra performed in the Center. After the early September tuning of the hall (with JaffeHolden’s Cooper), Orchestra conductor, Steven Eggleston, said: "We were finally able to hear each other play. It's more than a dramatic difference. This is exciting."

Initially during the tuning, the orchestra set up on the stage extension. “The placement was an experiment,” says JaffeHolden sound systems designer, Mark Turpin. “We wanted to see how well the natural forestage reflector worked in the downstage position, which might be needed for a very large ensemble. Actually it worked too well. It hurt the balance of the strings in the seating area, and had no benefit for inter-orchestral listening.”

The Hall and Electronic Architecture
As well as help musicians hear themselves play, the orchestra shell also helps project and focus unamplified sound out into the hall. However, the addition of a shell alone could not solve the acoustic issues in the Center.

“We identified some echoes from the old sound system coming off the curved, under-balcony wall,” says Cooper. JaffeHolden deadened the back wall with fiberglass treatment of the wall itself and a velour curtain, thus adding a bit more absorption to an already dry acoustic. But because of the historic and financial restraints on the architects and the acoustic design team, there was never any question that the ceiling would be removed or even the plaster sidewalls treated to create an architecturally resonant acoustic in the hall. From the start, JaffeHolden’s solution to the acoustic issues of the Center was to install an electronic architecture system using a LARES mainframe.

Electronic architecture systems work by substituting virtual reflecting surfaces (that is, loudspeakers) where architecturally reflecting surfaces are lacking in order to compensate for excess sound absorption in a room. At the Center, this meant installing approximately 75 loudspeakers into the body of the ceiling and under the balcony. Two microphones hanging forward of the proscenium pick up sound that is specially processed to simulate a mix of early reflection energy and acoustic decay with the frequency content adjusted to “fill in” the missing components of the room’s natural sound. This energy is then delayed to the LARES systems and distributed among the embedded speakers.

“Listeners don’t identify the speakers as the sound source,” says Scott Leonard, president of Professional Audio Designs, the Wisconsin-based company who installed the audio systems in the hall. “The audience simply responds to the music in the room.”

“This is a hall with good ‘bones,’” says Cooper. “It works well for reinforced music, but it needed help to be a really good venue for acoustic programs. Bloomington is a community that doesn’t have the resources or even the need for a multi-million dollar concert hall that will be used for one purpose. Electronic architecture is the key for communities like Bloomington to get a really fine facility that serves their needs perfectly without having to change the existing hall’s, volume, dimensions, and finishes. The investment in the system is more than paid for by the amount of money they would have spent on raising the roof and adding adjustable acoustics, which for this building was an impossibility for zoning, historic, as well as financial reasons.”

The LARES-based electronic architecture system was designed and programmed by JaffeHolden’s Systems Group with Steve Barbar, principal of Lexicon Acoustic Reinforcement and Enhancement Systems. It has three basic pre-sets: for symphonic music, chamber, and small group ensemble. For acoustic music programs, the electronic architecture system is turned on and a program-appropriate preset is selected.

“I have to admit, I was a little skeptical when I heard that an electronic architecture system was being installed,” says BCPA Theater Technical Director, Rodney Stickrod. His experience with electronic architecture in another city and another hall was not successful. A poorly designed enhancement system unlike a less-than optimally designed sound reinforcement system, can leave a bad taste for the technology in general. Further, Stickrod was skeptical that an electronic architecture system could make enough of a difference in the acoustic response of the hall to be discerned by the average listener.

“I moved all around the hall during a rehearsal with the Wesleyan Civic Orchestra,” Stickrod says, “listening with the JaffeHolden system on and then with the system off, repeatedly. Not only can you tell the difference when the system is on or off, but what you hear is a beautiful difference. I was very impressed.” Impressive also, he says, is how easily the system is maintained; it acts as a part of the architecture, with no need for tweaking or any user intervention.
 
New Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing
A ballroom that can seat 1000 is directly below the concert hall. The hall was basically gutted, including the seating, but the concrete floor of the hall remained basically untouched. “It’s an interesting floor,” says Executive Director Marquis. “It’s pre-cast with integral rebar, no steel beams supporting it, unusual for the period.” The space between the hall floor and the ballroom ceiling was an open-air plenum, he says, but now houses duct work, new plumbing, and electrical conduit. “Other than doing some repair and relocating floor ducts for the HVAC system, it remains as it was in 1921. The AC is still in the floor or the ceiling of the ballroom, but we replaced the cooling unit outside, at JaffeHolden’s suggestion, and sealed up windows on that side of the hall to shut out noise.” Because of the structural arrangement between the floor of the hall and the ballroom ceiling, simultaneous use of the hall and the ballroom beneath was effectively ruled out.

Sound Reinforcement System
For Pops and other amplified music, JaffeHolden also designed a front of house system. Technical director Stickrod designed the monitor system.

“Early in the design process, the intent was to provide a relatively small reinforcement system,” says Turpin, “because the planned program mix did not include shows that needed high-level reinforcement. However, as construction proceeded and the City of Bloomington started to look at programming in more detail, this program mix started to change.”

With Stickrod’s strong advocacy, BCPA owners decided they needed to beef up the audio FOH system to handle a broader range of shows. Once that decision was made, and the FOH system (consisting entirely of EAW loudspeakers) was installed, work turned to getting maximum performance out of the rig. “Mark (Turpin) worked very hard to get the system where I wanted it to be,” says Stickrod. “For some shows, like The Urban Funk Spectacular [Sept. 29th], I knew I needed the system to be loud. It could already handle pop and other formats, but I needed the system to handle a full range of acts.”

“In the end, Mark tuned the system from the bottom up. Instead of starting from the top speaker in the center cluster and working his way down, because we have such a deep balcony fill, he tuned the system from the bottom up, from the bass to the center cluster. This was the opposite of the way he would normally tune a system, but when he did, that’s when we hit the mark I was looking for.”

“Not many acousticians would have gone through that process without trying to impose their own expertise,” says Stickrod. “Not once in three separate tuning sessions did he ever tell me, No, you don’t want that... You want this. He listened to me and went way above and beyond to make sure I was happy with where the sound was. His understanding of what the hall was going to do, based on the initial concept, was not what I wanted the hall to be capable of. We didn’t start from the same mark. But the final product, where we ended up, is with a system that can do everything. Light jazz is perfect, clear with every instrument standing out. But with a little repatching around some of the processing and changing some EQ’s, you have a system that can plain get loud. That’s what I was looking for.”

Multiple compliments on the system’s clarity and power have followed since opening night—including The Urban Funk Spectacular, running their monitors way over 100db, says Stickrod. “We had to get over that with the FOH system, and we did. The performers loved it.”

The beefed-up FOH system includes flown Left/Center/Right main arrays of EAW AX-series cabinets, supplemented by permanently-mounted EAW SB180 and SB250 subwoofers and six SL 12Se-JHA front fills. All loudspeakers (both for the reinforcement systems and electronic architecture) are driven by Crown CT Series amplifiers. The under balcony electronic architecture loudspeakers do double duty as delay fills in the sound reinforcement system; otherwise, the two systems are completely separate.

At the front-of-house mix position, a Midas Heritage 1000 provides the mix horsepower needed for a house that supports a different kind of event every day. “We gave serious consideration to using a digital console,” says Stickrod, “but I wanted to be sure that road show engineers could step up and get a show running with a familiar interface, and the Heritage fit the bill well.” The basic FOH package also includes a complement of Klark Teknik gates and compressors and XTA graphics, along with CD playback from Tascam and effects processors from Lexicon, Yamaha, and TC Electronics.

The monitor system, as designed by Stickrod, is based around a 40-channel Crest LM 40/20 console, supplied by Professional Audio Designs. Stickrod matched the EAW FOH system with four EAW 200i wedges, two SM 84 wedges , one SM 500 wedge, one SB 330 Sub, two SB 850 Subs, and two JFX 260 side fills.

In the control room racks, XTA 224 and 226 processors handle loudspeaker management duties for the main reinforcement systems, while BSS Soundweb provides control and processing for the lobby and backstage paging and program systems. Although most of the lobby and backstage spaces are covered by Atlas ceiling loudspeakers, JaffeHolden faced an unusual challenge in the refurbished main stair foyer of the theatre. This large space with hard plaster walls and a vaulted ceiling has a natural reverberant decay of well over two seconds. The solution? Two EAW DSA250 loudspeakers. “The steerable pattern of the digitally controlled DSA proved invaluable in strategically directing sound in this area,” says Turpin. The DSA250 has eight high frequency and eight low frequency transducers with 16 channels of amplification in a 50” tall x 9” wide x 9” deep columnular cabinet. “The speakers are tucked between ornamental pillars in the corners of the lobby,” says Marquis, “and painted to match the pillars. They provided the sound reinforcement we need in the lobby for announcements, but unless you know where to look for them, you’d never know they were there.”

Many facilities like Bloomington’s rely on local rental contractors for supplemental equipment for their productions. But since very few rental options are available in the area, the BCPA decided to invest in their own monitor rig. Having the extra mix horsepower, processing, amplifiers, and portable loudspeakers available allows BCPA to provide sound for 1000-seat ballroom located below the main auditorium. The ballroom underwent cosmetic renovation during the project as well as receiving all new mechanical, electrical, and HVAC. The plaster ceiling also received surface-mounted acoustic tiles to help control sound in the reverberant space.

“Universal enthusiasm” is how Executive Director Marquis describes the community has received to the restored venue. “Most people never thought this landmark would ever be restored fully,” he says, “or would not be restored to retain its historical character. But when they come here, they see that the building which they had come to cherish has been transformed into a welcoming, warm, and comfortable environment.” Theatrical lighting and sound in the hall have impressed patrons as well, the sound of unamplified instruments praised for both its warmth and clarity, says Marquis.

Box office figures for BCPA’s first 30 days show 39 events (performances, tours, banquets) and 12,200 patrons. A little basic math projects a volume of over 120,000 visitors to the Bloomington’s North Downtown district over the first year of the BCPA’s performance schedule, numbers that will add dollars and life to area. Proving that good sound (lighting, architectural restoration, management, etc.) is good business.

For more information, visit www.artsblooming.com.

Pictured above: Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts from the stage. Photo credit: Fred Daly 

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