Green Music Center :: News Clip

GREEN MUSIC CENTER: THE MAKING OF A MUSIC MASTERPIECE

Published on July 3, 2005
© 2005- The Press Democrat

BYLINE: KATY HILLENMEYER

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
PAGE: A1

An acoustical gem, hewn like a fine stringed instrument from maple, fir and teak, is being crafted at Sonoma State University, where it could transform Sonoma County into a national center for music and the arts.

On a vacant hayfield near Rohnert Park, the university is moving forward with a 1,400-seat concert hall inspired by Tanglewood's famed Seiji Ozawa Hall in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts.
It will be the crown jewel of a $63.1 million performing-arts complex that has weathered nearly a decade of cost overruns, revisions and a nationwide economic downturn.

``It's going to put us on the map unlike anything else that's happened here,'' said Santa Rosa arts patron Arnie Carston, who has delighted in the artistry of Tanglewood concerts.

The Green Music Center's wood-lined, shoebox-shaped hall is modeled after Ozawa Hall, considered one of the top 15 acoustic venues in the world. Proponents predict it will become a West Coast arts mecca drawing more than 150,000 enthusiasts each year and recasting the university, its neighboring cities and Sonoma County as world-class cultural hubs.

``In 10 years from the opening of the Green Music Center, I believe Sonoma County will be as well known as an arts destination as it is known as Wine Country,'' said Alan Silow, the Santa Rosa Symphony's executive director.

The symphony, which kicks off the annual Green Music Festival on campus Monday, will move to the performing arts and conference center after its expected opening in three years.

Tanglewood serves as the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer residence and hosts the celebrated Jacob's Pillow dance festival and an array of theaters, museums, historic sites and art studios.

In that rural New England setting nearly nine summers ago, Telecom Valley pioneer Don Green and his wife, Maureen, embraced Sonoma State President Ruben Arminana's vision to create the West Coast's own Tanglewood.

That dream will start to become reality this summer, when the last obstacle to construction is removed with passage of the state budget containing $17.85 million for the center's academic wing.

``With construction under way, we should be able to attract a number of people who maybe haven't been believers in the project,'' said Don Green, who has co-chaired a $40 million private fund-raising drive.

The strongest skepticism comes from a number of Sonoma State professors who say Arminana's determination to build a ``Tanglewood West'' has drained money and manpower from instruction.

``We can't afford his vision,'' SSU professor Steve Orlick said, ``and if it gets built, we could lose millions keeping it operating.''

University administrators, however, say the center will bring in both private and public dollars as it attracts new students.

Community leaders also are focusing more on the Green center's drawing power -- and its potential to burnish the image of Rohnert Park as a suburban bedroom community.

``I don't think people really now equate Rohnert Park with Wine Country,'' said Brad Baker, president and CEO of Codding Enterprises, which is considering building a boutique hotel as part of a development a mile south of campus. ``But there's the potential to make that connection if they come to the Green Music Center.''

Rohnert Park Mayor Jake Mackenzie views the center and a 300-acre development at its doorstep -- a ``University District'' calling for a town square, homes, businesses and a small hotel -- as vital economic engines for his city.

``Everything we're doing in Rohnert Park to make it an attractive city in which to live, work and recreate will be boosted considerably by the Green Music Center, he said.

The center also has the potential to further define Sonoma County as an arts destination, said symphony director Silow. The county's existing visual- and performing-arts talent, combined with the draw to outside performers, could help transform it into a cultural tourism magnet rivaling Santa Fe, N.M., or the Berkshires.

Gayle Carston, immediate past president of the board at Santa Rosa's Burbank Center for the Arts, expects the Green center to entice visitors who will broadly sample area attractions.

``In the past, people have thought about staying in San Francisco and coming here for a day,'' Carston said. ``That's going to change. I think people are going to start coming and staying here.''

Santa Rosa Symphony's outgoing music director Jeffrey Kahane also foresees an influx of arts patrons, spurred by the Green center's acoustics and the reputation it could build for music education at SSU. He compares the project's potential as a cultural focal point to other West Coast halls, including Cal Poly's Christopher Cohan Performing Arts Center at San Luis Obispo, Benaroya Hall in Seattle and the Walt Disney Concert Hall -- a $247 million Frank Gehry-designed landmark that has helped revitalize downtown Los Angeles after nearly two decades in the making.

The Green center, which includes a 300-seat recital hall, classrooms, practice rooms, a conference center and offices, won't spring up in a vacuum.

Its construction coincides with plans for expansion of the Burbank Center for the Arts, which, unlike Sonoma State, sits visibly alongside Highway 101 and boasts a 25-year record of showcasing national talent. The Graton Rancheria tribe also has proposed a 1,500-seat performing-arts center as part of a casino planned west of Highway 101 in Rohnert Park.

Despite the multiple venues, many music, dance and theater enthusiasts predict existing facilities will thrive by serving their own niches and demographics -- and by collaborating on multi-venue festivals.
``The Green Music Center's acoustics are going to set it apart from every other hall in the region,'' said David Fischer, the Burbank Center's executive director. ``But those attributes serve a very specific genre of music, and we don't intend to be entering into the classical music realm.''

Sonoma State already is experimenting with staging a blockbuster concert. Officials consider the Eagles' sold-out Aug. 14 concert on university athletic fields a test of accommodating 10,000 concertgoers.
A far cry from the Bach choral music that motivated the Greens to pledge their $10 million in 1997, the Eagles' pop/rock repertoire falls squarely within the spectrum of programs the Green center aims to stage.

Green center executive director Floyd Ross envisions a smorgasbord of classical, world, folk, country, jazz and rock music -- along with poetry slams, playwrights' readings, dance and visual arts exhibitions.
Inside this multidisciplinary ``laboratory,'' students, academics, amateurs and career-bound artists-in-training could interact with guest performers.

If Grammy-winning opera singer Renee Fleming came to perform at the Green center, for example, ``the magical thing about a place like this is she just might have the incentive to stay awhile,'' suggested Jeff Langley, chairman of music and performing arts at Sonoma State.

Sound engineer Leo Beranek, a retired Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and author of a book that ranks the acoustics in 100 of the world's top venues, said the shoebox-style hall is ``the kind of design that's been highly successful everywhere.''

He lists Ozawa 13th among 50 concert halls worldwide. As for the Sonoma State hall, he said, ``You can't predict exactly whether it's going to be in the top 10, but they're on the right road.''

The Sonoma State center will compete in a Bay Area market anchored by venues that include the Chronicle Pavilion at Concord, HP Pavilion in San Jose, Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco and Berkeley's historic Greek Theatre.

``There are a tremendous number of variables, but at 10,000 (capacity) it fits right between the Greek Theatre and Chronicle Pavilion,'' said Healdsburg's Lee Smith, president of Bill Graham Presents, which is bringing the Eagles to Sonoma State. ``It would be sharing the universe of arts that could play in that general range, rather than usurping any of those venues.''

The North Coast's wine industry also is prepared to tap future Green center patrons.

``Anytime you have an opportunity to add the cultural and performing arts to your portfolio, ... the wine industry benefits,'' said Jaimie Douglas, executive director of the Sonoma County Wineries Association.
Similarly, Green center backers are eager to breathe life into its structures, and to begin booking performers.

``It's like building a computer,'' said Don Green, a co-founder of the Petaluma tech company Advanced Fibre Communications. ``It's a piece of junk until you put some software in it and make it work for a living.''

News Researcher Michele Van Hoeck contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Katy Hillenmeyer at 521-5274 or khillenmeyer@pressdemocrat.com.

PHOTO: 2 mugs: Ruben Arminana, Don Green
DRAWING: 3 watercolor renderings by Al Forster
1 by Dennis Bolt: Diagram of Green Music Center
MAP: 1 by Dennis Bolt/Press Democrat: Green Music Center site

Infobox:

How the vision came together
A modest choral hall might have been built at SSU, if not for a pivotal trip to Tanglewood one summer prior to Don and Maureen Green's $10 million pledge. There, Ruben Arminana, the Greens and other key SSU staff met and began to agree on a broader scope to the project -- to bring Ozawa Hall's renowned acoustics to the North Bay.

Green Music Center
The design of Sonoma State's long-anticipated Green Musci Center is nearing completion. Here's a look at where the vision currently stands:
text unavailable - see microfilm

TIMELINE
1997: Don and Maureen Green commit $10 million to build a concert hall at SSU, based on Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass.

1998: Architect William Rawn and Assoc. of Boston, who designed Ozawa Hall, begin plans for the concert hall.

1998: Santa Rosa Symphony votes to join forces with SSU in building the hall.

1999: Winery owners Jacques and Barbara Schlumberger promise $1 million toward the project, kicking off the Santa Rosa Symphony's $10 million pledge.

2000: Proposed concert hall, which now includes classrooms and a 300-seat recital hall, is officially named the Donald and Maureen Green Music Center, and a ceremonial groundbreaking takes place.

2001: Economic downturn sends high-tech industries into a tailspin and slows fund-raising drive.

2002: SSU completes parking lot next to the music center and roads connecting to campus, culminating an $11 million parking expansion. The site is graded and a berm is built as a sound barrier.

2002: Short on funds to build the music center, SSU decides to build the project in two stages, starting with the 1,400-seat concert hall.

2003: Still $10 million short, SSU puts the concert hall out to bid for the first time; the lowest bid comes in more than $6 million over budget.

2003: Former Press Democrat Publisher Evert Person and his wife, Norma, pledge $3 million to the center, bringing it within $1 million of an early goal.

2004: Having reached its $39 million goal, SSU puts the concert hall out to bid for a second time. Two bids come in $9 million over budget.

2004: SSU revives original plan for music center in a public-private partnership, proposing $16 million in state funds for the educa- tional wing and $7 million from Sonoma State Enterprises for convention and dining facilities.

January 2005: California State University trustees authorize the sale of nearly $12.7 million in tax-exempt notes to partially fund the center's concert hall, which will cost $32 million to build.

Spring 2005: As of March 31, SSU reports, $7.6 million of the $63.1 million in music center costs have been spent -- largely on design fees, land acquisition and financing costs.

July 2005: Before construction proceeds, SSU awaits $17.85 million in voter-passed Proposition 55 education-facilities bond money, a state budget component needing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's approval, plus $4.8 million in CSU revenue bonds for the Green center's conference facilities.

-- Katy Hillenmeyer