A Night in Radio City

There are certain places in New York City that, at least for me, are so physically overwhelming and embody the spirit of the city so perfectly that experiencing them never gets old.  I’ve lived in this city for most of my life and have probably passed through the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal hundreds of times, but I still feel a thrill if I take a second to stop and appreciate its grandeur.  Another such place is Radio City Music Hall.  I recently attended a concert there and as the night approached I found myself not only excited for the show (a favorite band of mine, Pulp, was playing New York for the first time in fourteen years), but also to see it at this particular venue.  I’ve only been there a few times in my life, and this would be my first visit in about a decade.  For a New Yorker, it’s hard not to romanticize a place like Radio City.  Woody Allen, who built much of his career on romanticizing New York, perfectly captured the feeling of first going there in this scene from Radio Days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnJ-KfosjJg
On entering the building, I immediately felt that rush one gets on entering a large and beautifully designed space.  The lobby was packed with people milling around in anticipation of the show, making it difficult to stop and fully take it in, but I managed to steal a few minutes to admire it.  The art deco design by Edward Durell Stone and Donald Deskey, with its deep red walls and gold drapes, is elegant without being overly ornate or gaudy.

But the most striking feature is the large mural across from the entrance – “Fountain of Youth” by Ezra Winter.  We’ve talked in class about the idea of a space being arranged in order to create a narrative.  The mural, which depicts a ghostly procession ascending into the clouds, along with the layout of the lobby, seems to physically draw you across the space and up the stairs.   Despite the fact that our seats were on the ground level, I actually found myself tempted to walk up the stairs and follow the painting’s progression, but the crowd and the imminent start of the show kept me from doing it.

Once inside the main theater, I had a few moments to take in this equally overwhelming space, particularly the sunrise-emulating arcs that radiate from the stage all the way to the tiered seating in the back:
 
Soon the actual show started, and I immediately saw how a major challenge for a performer in a venue like this is to create a sense of intimacy and connect with even the furthest-away fans despite the size and grandeur of the space.  The acoustics of the theater obviously play major part in accomplishing this.  You can tell that the speakers are finely tuned to work with the space as perfectly as possible (except the rare occasion in this case of the vocals being drowned out by the instrumentals).  It was also fascinating to observe the way the band’s lighting arrangements and lead singer Jarvis Cocker’s movements played with the space.

There were three moments during the show in which the interplay between performer and space were particularly striking.  The first came during the performance of “Disco 2000”, one of the bands more popular songs.  Although our seats were fairly close to the stage, they were also a bit to the left of it, slightly limiting our view.  I didn’t realize it at first, but the auditorium features gradual staircases on either side of that connect stage to one of the lower tiers.  During this particular number, Cocker made his way up the one closest to us and performed most of the song from there, suddenly giving us a prime spot.

During a later number, Cocker performed from the other side while lines of dancers gradually made their way down both sets of stairs and onto the stage.
At another point, the band utilized a lighting effect that sent a pattern of green lasers from the stage and over the crowd.  By chance I happened to turn around at this point, and noticed that it made for the added effect of a kind of green star field on the tiered sections in the back.  I wondered if this effect was at all intentional, as the people in the tiers would be completely oblivious to it, and only the few people in the orchestra section who turned around would notice it.  Unfortunately, the below picture doesn’t do the effect justice, but hopefully gives some idea:

The most striking moment came later in the show during the song “Sunrise”.  This is obviously a well-chosen song for this space, with its aforementioned sunrise design, but the band accentuated this connection with the lighting design.  The theater and most of the lighting elements on the stage were darkened, except for several bright lights behind the band that extended out into the theater like rays of sunshine.  As I looked at the concentric circles of the walls from my particular vantage point, I realized that they not only resembled sunshine but also sound waves, pulsating out to reach and envelop the crowd.  What resulted was a beautifully orchestrated marriage sound, light and space.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV2pP80fn2c
In the end, despite my proximity to the stage and the band’s (mostly successful) attempts to engage the entire audience, I would hardly call the experience “intimate”.  I especially find it difficult to think of it that way after another concert-going experience I had the week before.  This was at the Beacon Theater on 74th Street.  Recently restored, the Beacon was built a few years before Radio City and holds about half the capacity.

The main act I was there to see, the Magnetic Fields, gave a typically low-key acoustic show, but the opening act proved to be the more memorable experience.   My friend and I had balcony seats but, due to the size of the theater, we still felt fairly close to the stage.  The band, DeVotchKa, utilized a variety of international styles and switched between various interesting instruments like accordions, violins and trumpets.  This distinct sound, along with the lead singer’s strong voice, filled the auditorium and captivated the audience.  After the concert, my friend and I agreed that it was the part of the evening we enjoyed most.  It wasn’t so much that they were the better band, but their sound worked so perfectly with the acoustics of the space that it gave the thrill and sense of connection with both performer and audience that one hopes for from live music.
One thing I can’t help but think about in regard to these two spaces is that they spent much of their histories as movie theaters.  Neither venue has regularly shown movies since the 1970s, with Radio City only hosting the occasional premiere.  The Woody Allen clip reminds us of a day before TV and multiplexes when movie-going was a much different experience.   Our movie theaters today are much more streamlined and functional, and a single-screen movie house like the Ziegfeld on 54th Street (only around since 1969) is something of an anomaly.  The financial realities of today would likely make it difficult to maintain elaborate spaces like Radio City and the Beacon with just movie screenings, so they’ve mainly given over to concerts and special events.  But we can take comfort in the fact that preservation and restoration efforts over the years allow us to still occasionally experience these spaces in their full glory.