Meyerson Symphony Center Facts

Here are a few facts about the Meyerson Symphony Center.

The Structure

The centerpiece of the Meyerson is the McDermott Concert Hall, a European "shoebox" style music chamber, designed to establish intimacy between performer and audience.
McDermott Hall features reverberation space around the top of the hall concealed by 74 thick concrete doors weighing 2.5 tons each. These chamber doors can be opened and closed to increase or reduce reverberance.
In addition, 56 acoustical curtains within the concert hall and reverberation chamber help to diminish sound vibrations, depending on the use of the hall.
A system of canopies weighing more than 42 tons is suspended above the stage and can be raised, lowered or tilted to reflect the sound throughout the audience chamber. The canopies also assist the musicians to hear one another and accurately assess the nuances of their own playing.

Architect I. M. Pei's work includes such facilities as the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, the East Wing of the National Gallery and the Glass Pyramid at the Louvre in Paris. His architectural contributions to Dallas' skyline include City Hall, One Dallas Centre and Fountain Place.
Acoustician Russell Johnson, of Artec Consultants, Inc. in New York, has designed acoustics for halls in North America, Europe and Asia for more than 40 years, using his pioneering system of adjustable acoustics. That approach reaches a peak in the Eugene McDermott Concert Hall and has become a benchmark for acoustical design of modern halls.

Located on the Northeast wall, "Dallas Panels (Blue Green Black Red)" by Ellsworth Kelly was commissioned for the Center by the Dallas Symphony's Art Acquisition Committee. It's the artist's largest painting and one of many panel works he has completed since 1949. Kelly decided to produce a work that expressed "clarity, optimism and joyful good spirits."
Outside, at the entrance to Betty B. Marcus Park, De Musica by Eduardo Chillida was commissioned for the Meyerson by Frank Ribelin, a prominent Dallas art collector. The piece consists of an estimated 68 tons of forged steel in two 15-foot columns with branches reaching toward each other without touching. The columns were forged in Reynosa, Spain. The Chillida sculpture was the first piece of art commissioned for the Center and was a special request by Pei.

Rising the full height of the concert chamber, the Herman W. and Amelia H. Lay Family Concert Organ serves as the visual focal point. One of the largest mechanical action organs ever built for a concert hall, the instrument is Opus 100 of C. B. Fisk, Inc. of Gloucester, Massachusetts.
The organ, numbering 4,535 pipes, consists of 84 ranks with 65 stops, four manual keyboards of 61 notes each and a pedal keyboard of 32 notes. The pipes range in size from 3/4 inches tall and 3/16 inches in diameter to 32 feet tall and 18 inches in diameter. The casework is of quarter-sawn American cherry wood accented by brass decorative strips.
The construction and installation of the organ were made possible by a generous gift of the Lay Family.

The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center has:

260,000 square feet of above-ground space
225,000 square feet of below-ground space
35,130 cubic yards of concrete
30,000 square feet of Italian travertine marble
22,000 pieces of Indiana limestone
2,062 seats
918 square panels of African (Makore) cherry wood
216 square panels of American cherry wood
211 glass panels (no two alike) comprising the conoid windows
85-foot-high ceiling in the concert hall
50 restrooms
26 video camera positions within the concert hall
4 private suites for meetings, banquets and recitals
2 audio and video broadcast/recording studios
On an annual basis, there are over 325 concert hall events, 20 to 30 banquets, 200 photo and film shoots and over 800 hours of rehearsal and recording activity