Civic Auditorium Gets a Final Fine-Tuning

As colliding cymbals rang in a brassy crescendo, soundman Shawn Edlund stood before several hundred colored buttons and tried to figure out how to patch Microphone 24 into Amplifier 3 on Channel 1.

Or, in layman’s terms, how to make the Conejo Symphony Orchestra sound really stupendous.

“We have 27,000 watts up there,” Edlund said, gesturing toward the stage. “We can bring up a lot of power.”

But with their energy, as well as their notes, bouncing off every angle of the Civic Arts Plaza’s jagged walls, the musicians will need little help from amplifiers.

Thrilled to be performing, at long last, in a professional concert hall, orchestra members thundered through a blazing rehearsal of Shostakovich’s “Festival Overture” earlier this week. They will return to the purple-hued hall tonight for another run-through before Friday’s official opening of the Civic Auditorium.

Until then, technical crews will scurry around the auditorium testing acoustics and adjusting amplifiers in a frenzied bid to tweak Thousand Oaks’ prized auditorium into tip-top shape.

“It’s incredibly complex,” said Gary Mintz, the city’s haggard-looking technical production manager. “There’s just hours and hours of work.”

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With the grand opening careening ever closer, that workload has jumped dramatically this week. Stagehands need to learn the special effects, ushers need to memorize the seating charts and musicians need to adjust their playing to match the theater’s stunningly clear acoustics.

Percussionist Adam Wells, for example, said he must keep reminding himself to relax.

In the Conejo Symphony Orchestra’s former home, the gymnasium at Cal Lutheran University, musicians had to play in broad, sometimes blaring strokes to reach audience members in the back row of hard-backed chairs. In the Probst Auditorium, however, they can tone down the volume and focus on nuances--knowing that all 1,800 spectators will hear every note.

“In the gym, you would bang, you would saw, you would blow,” Wells said, mimicking the frantic aggression of drummers, violinists and trumpet players struggling to be heard. “Here, you just think and it happens. It’s not necessary to overplay.”

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The acoustics are so good, symphony director Everett Ascher said, that when he was standing in the balcony during a recent rehearsal, “I could swear the triangle player was next to me, tapping on cut crystal.”

That kind of precision scares, as well as thrills, the performers.

Visitors to the auditorium have told of unwittingly eavesdropping on private conversations, which echo through the hall every bit as clearly as symphonic music. That legendary reverberation has put singer Bruce Vandervalk slightly on edge, as he prepares to join a 250-member chorus Friday night in belting out Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”

“I’ll have to sing very carefully and pronounce the German as best I can,” Vandervalk said. “If you sing a wrong vowel in here, everyone will be able to tell.”

Aiming for a flawless performance, symphony conductor Elmer Ramsey listens intently to every note of every rehearsal. Stopping his musicians frequently, he asks one to hold a note longer, another to move to a different chair, another to aim for a softer sound.

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Meanwhile, at the massive sound board, Edlund and other technicians fiddle with the controls to even out the music.

They do not plan to touch the board much during the symphony’s portion of the opening night concert; the 75 musicians and 250 singers should provide a fairly balanced harmony. But sound technicians will need to adjust the microphones during Broadway star Bernadette Peters’ second-act performance.

And although they have a rough outline of her show, they will not be able to rehearse until Peters arrives at the Civic Arts Plaza, most likely Friday morning. Still, technical production manager Mintz is confident his crews will pull it off.

“Of course it’s going to work,” Mintz said, dropping into a plush purple seat, exhausted. “Of course it is. I’d go out and drink myself to death right now if I didn’t think it was going to work.”