The cavernous room is still very much a construction site: Steel columns jut from exposed wooden framing, and planks and safety cones rest on the dusty concrete floor. But as Micah Cone stands at the front singing Ave Maria, his voice hovers and reverberates with striking richness, enveloping everyone in the unfinished 9,360-square-foot space, no matter where they stand.
It feels like being embraced by the sacred song, and it’s an unexpectedly powerful and immersive experience, especially considering the acoustic concert hall has yet to be outfitted with all the audio flourishes its creative team has planned.
Once complete, project leaders say the hall — now taking shape in Grass Valley, a historic California Gold Rush town nestled in the Sierra Nevada foothills — will attract top musicians eager to perform in one of only 12 concert halls in the U.S. built with a sound-enhancing “shoebox” design, which has long been prized for balancing warmth and clarity through natural acoustics, without the need for electronic amplification.
Cone, who has been singing in choirs since the sixth grade, is production manager and assistant to the artistic director at InConcert Sierra, a nonprofit founded in 1946 that brings classical and choral performances to Grass Valley, a town of about 14,000 known for its quaint Victorian-era architecture, rural charm and arts-appreciating spirit. At a moment when the cultural sector faces significant challenges, InConcert Sierra is advancing toward its audacious goal of building an acoustic concert hall of international caliber in an old mining town.
In an acoustic concert hall, sound travels without the need for microphones or speakers, as Cone’s impromptu performance demonstrates. “There’s sort of an organic, natural feeling that envelops the room,” Alasdair Fraser, a touring violinist known as a steward of the Scottish fiddling tradition, said in an interview. “The molecules move in a different way. There’s something ancient and beautiful.”
Fraser, who lives near Grass Valley, says he’s excited to perform in the the 540-seat concert hall, and believes it will draw world-class artists. It’s the centerpiece of Crown Point Venues, a new $25 million performing arts complex that’s expected to open as soon as September, with a 2,565-square-foot black box theater and a 4,400-square-foot conference center also planned.
From Lincoln Center To Grass Valley
Surrounded by towering pines in a building that once housed a software company, the venue has already secured a high-profile partnership with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, whose artists will perform multiple concerts there each season. Crown Point Venues is the Chamber Music Society’s only partner west of the Mississippi.
“Not many people know where Grass Valley is or have even heard of it, but that doesn’t seem to matter to people here,” David Finckel, a cellist and co-artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, said in an interview. “What seems to matter is the quality of what they’re going to make for themselves. Their instincts are pure, they are uncompromised and their quest for artistic excellence is at the highest level.”
Finckel spoke about the project during a January visit to Grass Valley, where he and fellow Lincoln Center chamber musicians performed an all-Beethoven program at the local church that InConcert calls its temporary home.
Once the hall is complete, such performances will soon shift to a stage built to accommodate a 50-person orchestra. The stage will have more than ample room for the two Hamburg Steinway concert grand pianos the Grass Valley team procured with help from Wu Han, CMS’ co-artistic director, herself a concert pianist.
These pianos — known for their clear, bright tone and considered the gold standard for concert grands — will echo through a hall with double-framed walls, a 40-foot ceiling designed for maximum acoustic response and a roof designed to isolate visitors from outside noise, including planes from a nearby airport that also serves as a base for firefighters during wildfire season.
Cellist Amit Peled, a professor of strings at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, joins Finckel and Wu Han among the musicians enthusiastically awaiting the hall’s opening.
“He’s very excited about getting to perform here,” said Ken Hardin, InConcert Sierra’s artistic director. “He talks about it as ‘his’ concert hall. ‘When is my concert hall going to be done?’”
Science Of The Shoebox
The shoebox design dates back to 19th century European concert halls where aristocrats gathered for intimate classical performances. The geometry of a space greatly impacts acoustics, and in the case of the rectangular shoebox, the ceiling height is approximately half the width of the room, and the width about half the length. The narrow, parallel side walls create early reflections that heighten clarity and reverberate over time. The design also enhances the difference between softer and louder notes, which allows listeners to perceive the wide dynamic range of classical music.
“It’s a very simple concept and it’s a very predictable outcome,” Hardin said in an interview.
Another factor contributing to the superior sound is that the hall eschews square corners or flat surfaces in favor of curves that disperse sound in all directions without producing echoes. The end result is an environment where sound arrives at listeners from all directions.
Hardin quotes a professional acoustician when summing up the overall effect: “Envelopment, envelopment, envelopment.”
That spatial intimacy extends beyond the audience, notes the violinist Fraser.
“To perform in a place where you feel like the the venue is enabling you to do what you’ve always wanted to do is the ultimate, the pinnacle of the artistic experience,” he said.
The hall will prioritize chamber, choral and orchestral music. Demographic data shows that audiences drawn to classical performances skew over 50, yet a 2022 study by England’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra found that the number of people under 35 incorporating orchestral music into their daily lives has increased — they’re now more likely to listen to it than their parents, though not necessarily to attend concerts.
Hardin envisions attracting a cross-generational crowd through the appeal of live performances that will include movie showings accompanied by live orchestral music, as well as Broadway and jazz series. The space will also host theater performances, dance recitals and lectures.
Nature Delivers A Big Blow
InConcert Sierra has long dreamed of having a home of its own, and that dream took a huge leap forward when the 42,000-square-foot offices of Grass Valley Group, which helped pioneer video production technology, became available for a bargain price after the real estate market for office spaces bottomed out during the COVID-19 pandemic. A community member footed the $2 million bill.
Then came a near-catastrophe. On March 4, 2023, the day after escrow closed, a massive “snowmageddon” storm dumped more snow than the community had seen in years, causing 14,000 square feet of the building’s roof to collapse. Fortunately, the calamity happened when no one was inside.
The buckled roof represented a major blow, but it also significantly sped construction. InConcert Sierra had already planned to raise part of the roof above the concert hall to achieve the shoebox design’s intended proportions, moving on to the conference center and black box theater in phases. With so much of the roof caved in and in need of repair, “it forced us into constructing everything at once,” Monroe Lovejoy, InConcert Sierra’s board president, said while delivering an overview of the project.
The change effectively halved the project’s timeline, reducing it from six to 10 years to about three to four.
Funding sources for the project include a $3 million California state grant and significant community contributions raised in an ongoing capital campaign. A major donor asked that the concert hall be named Hardin Hall to honor Ken Hardin and his wife Julie Hardin, executive director of InConcert Sierra. When the hall opens, it will be the “crown jewel” of the new performing arts center, Lovejoy says. And, its backers hope, of Grass Valley itself.