RPG Diffusor Systems

The Phoenix Symphony Orchestra had to find a temporary home for their 2004-2005 season while their permanent home, Symphony Hall, is being renovated. They moved into the existing, 1500 seat, Orpheum Theatre in Phoenix despite the fact that the historic, atmospheric theatre was primarily intended for amplified music performance. They worried that the large stage house would ‘soak up’ all the sound, leaving very little to be projected out to the audience. Complicating matters further for orchestral performance was the existing sound absorptive ceiling (an aspect of the hall that is actually favorable for amplified music performance.) The RPG VAMPS shell system provides the great onstage acoustics and projection into the hall the Symphony requires.

Acoustic Consultant

Mr. David Conant – McKay Conant Brook, Inc.
(Westlake Village, CA ~ www.mcbinc.com)

“The VAMPS offer unusually rich and warm sound on the performing stage for the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra. The sound is highly uniform across the stage even when musicians are centered on the spaces between the VAMPS. This speaks to the diffusivity of the units. The Symphony is very happy with the VAMPS and there is little I would change about how the sound behaves on stage.”

Music Critic - The Arizona Republic

Mr. Kenneth LaFave “

The Phoenix Symphony's temporary home for the 2004-2005 season is the Orpheum Theatre, thanks to ongoing renovation at Symphony Hall. And as a few thousand people heard TPS play its opening concerts at the Orpheum Thursday through Saturday, it should be a very good year. The Orpheum, outfitted with a new shell, is a dry acoustic space that affords much greater clarity than Symphony Hall. Saturday night, when artistic adviser James DePreist led the orchestra in an all-Beethoven gala event, winds had richer color, brass more focus and strings more depth than ever heard before. DePreist was able to bring off his conception of the andante to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony - in which the various voices have greater independence - in part because of the Orpheum's acoustics.”

Phoenix Symphony General Manager

Mr. Joel Levin

“The shell for the Orpheum has been a great improvement and will provide both musicians and our patrons with a much deserved higher-level musical product. The string sound, in my opinion, is better than in Symphony Hall, the woodwinds now pop out, and the brass and percussion are balanced as well. We had two over-flow season preview concerts this past weekend, and received many, many positive comments on not only the sound of the hall, but the attractiveness of the towers as well.”

Civic Plaza Director

Mr. Jay Green

“The acoustical towers and ceiling integrate very well into the decor of the theater and obviously greatly help the quality of the Symphony production.”

Deputy Director, Phoenix Stages Division
Civic Plaza Department

Mr. Robert R. Allen

“The circle is complete! THANK YOU ALL for your hard work and efforts toward solving a difficult problem. The Symphony is pleased, as is the Department Director. Congratulations for this significant accomplishment. My hat is off to you!”

Symphony, new home resonate
Kenneth LaFave
The Arizona Republic
Oct. 1, 2004 12:00 AM

With its temporary move to the Orpheum Theatre (owing to renovation of Phoenix Symphony Hall), the Phoenix Symphony has taken on a new sonic identity.

The orchestra we heard Thursday night at the Orpheum is a more transparent and color-rich ensemble than the thick, sometimes fuzzy one we heard for years at Symphony Hall.

What a difference a venue makes.

With the new sound, and this season's quest for a music director to replace Hermann Michael, comes the once-in-a-decade (or so) possibility for this orchestra to nurture a new interpretive freedom and confidence.

Thursday night's concert, for example, ended with Liszt's symphonic poem Les Preludes in a performance that guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero led with passion and abandon, an energy the orchestra could not match.

Guerrero seemed from about two-thirds of the way through until the end to be trying to coax more out of the orchestra than it could supply - until the final measures, when the heavens at last opened and Liszt's torrential emotional cloudburst drenched the hall.

This was a freshly thought-out program, opening with Jennifer Higdon's tiny overture, Machine - a bristling evocation of what it means to pop out notes like so many rivets and screws - and proceeding with a stellar performance of the Schumann Piano Concerto; Benedetto Lupo, soloist. The second half brought Mozart's too-seldom heard Linz Symphony (No. 36 in C) and Les Preludes.

The Schumann was a perfect marriage of Romantic composer and masterful interpreter. Lupo made no bones about the flashy nature of the first movement. The astounding cadenza was a fireball under Lupo's control. The interplay of soloist and orchestra in the last movement was handled with flair by Lupo and Guerrero.

Guerrero, a large-framed man with surprisingly puckish grace on the podium, was at his pinnacle in the Mozart, culling from the orchestra an attractive lightness and ease.