San Francisco Classical Voice

Jackson Hall's interior walls almost gleam. The Douglas fir used for the paneling, clean and cheery, is repeated in the orchestra /shell, the ceiling screens, and the grillwork that divides the orchestra and parterre halves of the gradually sloping main floor. Similar grillwork, pierced with down-lights, appears in the canopy suspended over the front half of the concert performer's stage space. (Its height is adjustable according to acoustical needs). Standing off about an inch from the sandstone fronts of the two balconies and terraced side boxes, curved shield-like wood sound reflectors may serve some resonating function.

A 27-ton orchestra shell, its sides and top joined as one unit, frames the back wall, which is made up of tower-structures. All of that is moved back some 65 feet into storage when the stage (120-feet wide, 50-feet deep) is put into its theater mode and the proscenium is brought in. While the back wall towers move on rollers, the huge shell is raised above the floor by compressed air (55,000 pounds per square inch) and floating on this air cushion, is pushed back by the stage team. Design and technology are the impressive contributions of the acoustician Ronald McKay (McKay, Conant, and Brook), the theatrical design firm of Auerbach and Associates, S. Leonard Auerbach, principal, and the lighting designers, Auerbach & Glasow, Larry French, principal.

All this in the 104,000 square foot Mondavi Center, including Jackson Hall, a 250-seat studio theater, and support facilities, came in for $57 million, provided by a combination of university funds and $30 million raised in a six-year capital fund campaign. Major gifts were $10 million from Robert Mondavi, the Napa Valley wine maker, and his wife Margrit, (in addition to the $25 million he gave for the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science) and $5 million from Barbara K. Jackson. It is for her and her late husband, W. Turrentine Jackson, a professor of history at UC Davis, that the hall is named. In addition, the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians, operators of the Cache Creek Indian Bingo & Casino, contributed $600,000 to the hall as well as $400,000 for Native American studies. During excavation for the Center, bones of American Indians were unearthed and the Band decided on the gift because the site, once a location of Indian rituals and dance, will now be used to bring people together for artistic performances of all kinds.

The opening concert provided good impressions of the hall and an idea of its promise, even though programming and performance were not the best for the purpose, and there was no music specific to the occasion. Tilson Thomas simply repeated the week's Symphony's program played at Davies Hall the night before, beginning with a work by himself, one of the three Bay Area composers he exclusively favors. Tilson Thomas' new Urban Legend is original, both in concept — a 15-minute tone poem featuring the contrabassoon in concerto-like solo — and in its mixture of styles. Latin dance music is embedded in and contrasts with a variously tonal and atonal language. Against a high orchestral activity, described as a cityscape, the contrabassoon finds an unexpectedly rich characterization. The orchestra's contrabassoonist, Steven Braunstein, made the most of that, handsomely. The confrontation of the forces is strong, the textures often dark and muddy, glimpses of festive conga rhythms not withstanding, the outcome is satisfying. Although the piece itself works, it is hardly appropriate first music for the opening of a hall.

In this hall, where Tilson Thomas and the orchestra had at most only a brief experience before the performance, the percussion covered the strings and those strong sections did not speak out with real presence. It was selfish of him to put his piece forward. Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste was quite another matter, a 20th century masterpiece in a performance worthy of the work and the occasion. The first movement fugue, its material fiercely concentrated evolving in its organic fashion, was fully absorbing, working itself to its climax and then unfolding in mirror fashion. The allegro, its ideas derived from the fugue, played out its ebullient dance nature, the play between the divided string orchestras sounding crisply in the hall. The Adagio's "night music" was haunting, the ultra- pianissimo clinging to the walls. The finale with its Bulgarian dance rhythm and rondo carryings-on was like the release of this tight-wound spring of a piece.

Strauss' over-reaching, overdone Ein Heldenleben, the "leasterpiece" of his tone poems, and as vulgar a work as anything accepted in the regular repertory, had its all-out performance. The nine horns, two tubas and the rest of the brass blew their hearts out, their pneumatic efforts pounding off the shell's back wall, inundating the audience, providing a sense of empowerment and in that way, glorifying the room. The orchestra played it very well, of course, its first stand players distinguishing themselves, notably Robert Ward, principal horn, and concertmaster Alexander Barantschik in the great Heldenleben violin solo. It was interesting to hear him testing and feeling out his sound in the hall as he began and then opening up and engaging the solo very expressively.

Having scored with the big sound, and clearly believing that if a thing is worth doing, it's worth overdoing, Tilson Thomas produced an encore to make the most of those nine horns, the Prelude to Act III of Wagner's Lohengrin. It was a blow-out, a forceful triumph, sending the happy gala audience out to the champagne celebration in the lobby.

Forty years ago, when the SF Symphony inaugurated Freeborn Hall as the major performance venue on the UC Davis campus, it played not its program of the week but a work commissioned for the occasion, Milhaud's Symphony No. 12, Rurale. This time, however, at other of the inaugural events, musical compositions commissioned of faculty composers are being performed. The current celebration then also honors the 50-year evolution of the performing arts here, music developing from a one-man operation in a metal shack adjoining the cow barns to a distinguished music department and performing activity.

In the face of recession and cutbacks, this auspicious opening could not have been more fortunately timed. The facility occasions a large increase in the number of performance offerings at Davis, as many as 160 events for its inaugural season, and will serve as a splendid venue for the music, theater and dance departments and the university's school outreach program. UC Davis is now the unquestioned cultural center for the region.