Architecture and Design
At the heart of Schermerhorn Symphony Center is the 30,000 square feet (2,800 m2), 1,844-seat Laura Turner Concert Hall, which is home to the Nashville Symphony. The hall is of the shoebox style. It features natural lighting, which streams in through 30 soundproof, double-paned clerestory windows. Intricate symbolic motifs appear throughout the hall and the rest of the center, including irises (the Tennessee state flower), horseshoes (a tribute to the late Laura Turner's love of horses) and coffee beans (representing Nashville's Cheek family, which played a key role in the founding of the Nashville Symphony and also originally owned the Maxwell House Coffee brand).
Seats in Laura Turner Concert Hall are distributed over three levels, including a special choral loft behind the stage that can seat up to 146 chorus members; the seats are made available to audience members during non-choral performances. The stage can accommodate up to 115 musicians. The hall also features the custom-built Martin Foundation Concert Organ, crafted by Schoenstein & Co. of San Francisco, which has 47 voices, 64 ranks, and 3,568 pipes with three 32-foot stops.
The center's Neoclassical design blends other of Classical and Neoclassical structures throughout the city, including a full-scale replica of the Parthenon and the city's main public library.
The building's interior incorporates technological and acoustical features. The orchestra-level seats are mounted on motorized wagons that can be driven forward and lowered through the floor on a system of lifts, revealing an ornate Brazilian cherry and hickory parquet floor. These "chair-wagons" enable the concert hall to be converted into a 5,700-square-foot (530 m2) ballroom in approximately two hours. Dozens of motorized acoustic drapes and panels can be quickly adjusted to accommodate many styles of acoustic and amplified music. The Laura Turner Concert Hall is insulated from exterior noise by an acoustical isolation joint, a 2-inch gap of air that encircles the hall and prevents transmission of sound waves in or out.
Schermerhorn Symphony Center also houses the Mike Curb Family Music Education Hall, a 2,438-square-foot (226.5 m2) space that hosts smaller performances and also serves as a venue for the symphony’s ongoing music-education initiative, Music Education City. The center also has a public garden, the Martha Rivers Ingram Garden Courtyard, which is enclosed by a colonnade and is connected to the west side of the building. Because of the variety of interior spaces, which also include several lobbies and the Allen Walter Watson, Sr. Founders Hall, the center is frequently used for public and private events.
David M. Schwarz Architects, Inc., of Washington, D.C., designed the center, with Earl Swensson Associates of Nashville as architect of record. Paul Scarbrough of Akustiks was responsible for the acoustic design of the hall.
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