A New Dawn: Inside the Transformative Powell Hall Project

By Jeannette Cooperman

An exquisite French Renaissance concert hall—born a century ago as, oddly enough, a vaudeville and movie theater. A place where people had fallen in love, with Beethoven or Copland or one another. A place where they had forgotten, for a time, their sorrows; where their hearts had soared with the music.

St. Louisans felt privileged by such beauty—and loath to see it change. Gold-leafed acanthus leaves on ivory walls, crimson carpet glowing beneath Italian crystal chandeliers—who would want to lose any of that? And who would dare tamper with the near-magical acoustics? A guest violinist once announced that playing at Powell was “like being inside a Stradivarius.”

Still, given all the audiences, musicians, donors, and students who had endured cramped, uncomfortable conditions for a century just to be part of this place, the challenge felt worth undertaking.

Honoring the Past

It all began, inauspiciously enough, with the bathrooms. When St. Louis Symphony Orchestra president and CEO Marie-Hélène Bernard arrived in 2015, she saw men—men!—lined up outside the restroom at intermission. People had to choose between a glass of champagne and the loo queue. Backstage, female musicians were using a converted women’s restroom because when Powell became a concert hall, the orchestra included far fewer female musicians than today.

Bernard asked the board to explore a renovation. Today’s audiences were taller and needed more leg room. The entrance was a logjam. Musicians had to practice in the (oft flooded) basement and lug their instruments up and down the stairs. There was no proper storage backstage, so pianos were pushed to the side and percussion went 30 feet up, in the fly space for the old theater curtains.

Back in 1968, when the movie palace was converted to a concert hall, the SLSO board had already known it would need to be expanded someday. Half a century later, it would be even trickier to integrate a fresh, contemporary music center with a classical building on the National Register of Historic Places. But the chosen architectural firm, Snøhetta, has been finding graceful ways to do just that since its first project, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.

“We had to tie together two worlds,” says Snøhetta founder Craig Dykers of the Bibiliotheca Alexandrina project: A landmark of the ancient world where thousands of erudite papyrus scrolls went up in flames, and a new library that faced the future. They avoided overwhelming shapes and colors, gimmicks and prescriptive design. People should be able to recognize and feel the space, bringing their own impressions.

Snøhetta approached the SLSO’s new Jack C. Taylor Music Center the same way. Powell Hall would be protected, and the new Education and Learning Center expansion would add rehearsal, education, and more intimate performance space without looking stuck-on or characterless.

Keeping the Magic

When the renovation of the hall began, the musicians were terrified. With acoustics as fine as Powell Hall’s, science can only go so far to explain the quality of the sound—and the slightest alteration can destroy it.

“When we play in Vienna’s Musikverein, which is famous for its acoustics, the wood floor is so tattered it’s literally falling apart, but they’re afraid to replace it,” says David Halen, concertmaster and Eloise and Oscar Johnson Jr. Chair. “Anything you do to a hall can change the acoustics.”

In 1968, when the SLSO moved into Powell Hall, acoustics specialists polished and shaped the sound. But warm and enveloping as it was, it lacked a little vibrancy on the main floor, especially under the overhang of the balcony. So Snøhetta moved one of the rear walls forward and added reflecting walls on both sides. To add more aisles and roomier seats with improved sightlines, the number of seats was shaved from 2,683 to 2,150. Theater seats and audiences have a profound effect on acoustics, with upholstery, clothing, and even hair absorbing sound, so balance had to be deftly restored.

“Acoustics are the unsung hero of architecture,” Dykers remarks. “When they’re good, you don’t know why you feel good, you just do.”

When Stéphane Denève, The Joseph and Emily Rauh Pulitzer Music Director, heard the acoustics in the finished project, he collapsed with relief—into a new plush seat with room even for his 6’3” frame. He has loved Powell’s acoustics since he first guest-conducted in 2003. “It creates a warm resonance to the sound, which travels beautifully, and climbs without fading, which is fantastic,” Denève says. “At the top of the second balcony, you can even hear someone speaking softly onstage, which could be up to 172 feet away. If you’re in the seats under the balcony, the sound offers a more powerful and spacious presence. To improve a hall that was already so good is fabulous.”

Making the Audience Comfortable

Remember the old Powell Hall entrance, everybody jamming in at once, either lining up at the tiny box office or pressing through the narrow doors? “The building was meant to be a movie theater,” Snøhetta architect and project director Takeshi Tornier points out. “In and out.” Now there are three entrances for the public and one on the east side for the artists—all created without punching new holes in the building.

All the treasures—the chandeliers, the Met Bar—were preserved. Whenever a panel or wall had to be altered, the historic ornament was recreated. When it became obvious how much the ivory walls had yellowed over the years, repainting—a year-long project for ten painters—was added to the project. The real-gold gold leaf was freshened. Days were spent finding the same rich crimson for the carpet.

There are also new works of art, like the soaring Sheila Hicks installation, displayed in the new, Snøhetta-designed lobby. The SLSO commissioned the celebrated fiber and textile artist to create the artwork, which incorporates drapery fabric formerly used in Powell Hall.

Every landing in Powell Hall now has its own bar and restrooms. A quiet space has been added for patrons with sensory sensitivities, so they can still watch a performance even if they need to step out of the concert hall for a few minutes. New elevators will make Powell more accessible and welcoming for people of all abilities. Tornier also notes the change of the floor’s slope to enhance accessibility. Dykers grins. “He said that rather nonchalantly, but it was a hell of a challenge,” he says.

“Audiences will be enjoying music not as a transaction—buy a ticket, park, and get to your seat—but as an extended experience with a before, during, and after,” says Bernard. “We’ve created an extraordinary space where you can linger, reflect, pause, admire, savor the music you just heard. Social interactions will be so much better. And we’ll have the ability to bring our musicians to our audience and vice versa.”

Easing the Musicians’ Life

In the nomadic years during the renovation, auditions had to be done without hearing the musicians play in Powell Hall, Denève adds. “Now, these recently appointed musicians are in for a treat. And the others will be back home. Back to these fabulous acoustics every day, because we own the hall”—a coup many orchestras cannot boast. Finally, there will be ample space to rehearse, practice, relax, and literally compare notes.

“Just having a backstage area!” exclaims violinist Jessica Hellwege, the Margaret B. Grigg Chair. “A place where we can all meet up and get dressed, and all on one floor!” The music library, which was pigeonholed in one of the smoking rooms in the basement, is now on the main floor where the musicians enter and exit the stage.

Recruiting new musicians just got a whole lot easier. “We are competing with the best, not just in the US but in the world,” notes Steven Finerty, Chair of the SLSO Board of Trustees since 2020. “You have to have a venue that is ranked with them.” All things considered, “this will be one of the finest jobs for a musician in the country,” Halen says.

Reaching the Community

In the past dozen years, the number of people attending SLSO concerts or community programs has tripled. Still, when Dykers walked around the neighborhood, he “met a lot of people who said they’d always wanted to go to the symphony, but they didn’t feel welcome. The building just seemed to be asking them not to walk in.” Thick stone, small windows, the ornamentation high above one’s head … this was heroic architecture from a different era.
“It was hermetic,” says Tornier. Now the expansion brightens one side, the historic façade facing Grand is preserved, and “on the side facing Delmar, we have opened a way in,” Tornier says, with a widened, landscaped sidewalk to activate the space.

“When you are inside the concert hall, you can see outside, see the surroundings,” says Bernard. “And if you’re on the street, you see the life inside, and you are drawn in.” Because the space is more welcoming, you feel more included in the music. And more can be done to include more of St. Louis.

A full 85 percent of the SLSO musicians already participate in community outreach and education—a percentage that is strikingly high, compared to other orchestras. They’ve already committed to more than 300 performances and events for the coming season. Last year, one of Hellwege’s many outreach gigs was performing at a prison. Afterward, one of the women approached her and confided that “listening, she felt human again.”

Music appreciation is not taught in school as often as it used to be, notes Finerty. “One of our most important jobs is to educate,” he says. The newly added Education and Learning Center will expand the SLSO’s capacity to do just that.
Part of that education will be simply offering more music, at differing scales, with greater sensitivity. For neurodiverse kids, not only is there a quiet room, but the symphony also offers free noise canceling headphones, fidget toys, weighted blankets, guides to orient them in advance—and a trained and understanding staff.

It matters deeply to Denève, and to the musicians, that students can still hear a concert for the price of a movie ticket. That little ones can hear classical music early, so it is not strange to them. That the symphony can pay for tickets and even buses so kids who have previously faced barriers to attending can come.

For the youngest symphony-goers, Tiny Tunes concerts have been so popular that as many kids had to be turned away as were accommodated. Introducing kids to live music as early as three is “super important,” says Maureen Byrne, Vice President, Education and Community Programs. “We used to seat a small group onstage, with a very small orchestra. Now we can add more concerts.”

That means more capacity for programs like Peer to Peer, which matches kids with Youth Orchestra musicians several steps ahead of them. Joseph Hendricks, who manages Peer to Peer, knows the difference that kind of help can make. At 19, while studying bassoon performance at UMSL, he became an IN UNISON Scholar, mentored by the symphony’s artist in residence. He also discovered the Youth Orchestra, auditioned—and failed. So he took lessons with one of the symphony’s bassoonists. “I started working my butt off,” Hendricks recalls with a wry grin. “And the following year, I made it into the Youth Orchestra,” the first IN UNISON Scholar to do so. “It meant a lot to me to play with musicians of that caliber.”

In recent years, as the Powell Hall stage grew busier, rehearsals for the Youth Orchestra and the Symphony and IN UNISON choruses often had to be moved elsewhere. “We always made do. We always somehow managed,” says Byrne. The addition of the Education and Learning Center means that more energy can flow toward programming that supports larger groups of students and their families.

Even for the professionals, when small ensembles were planning community partnership concerts, “we had one room backstage we could fit a quartet into,” says Hellwege. She is also looking forward to more intimate connections with audiences, “even if it’s just a quartet and a group of fifty people. To be able to ask questions and get to really understand a piece of music in an hour—that gets people excited about music.

Stepping into the Future

A quarter-century ago, when the symphony had been forced to raid its endowment and was wobbling on the edge of bankruptcy, Jack Taylor, founder of the Enterprise corporation, acted.

“Go save the symphony,” he instructed his daughter, Jo Ann Taylor Kindle, who leads the Enterprise Foundation. She joined the symphony board (she remains an Honorary Trustee) and launched the rescue. “We reached a point where we had to decide if we were going to have a nice regional orchestra or really go for a wonderful orchestra,” she recalls. Her father did not hesitate: “We want a world-class symphony orchestra.”

In 2000, a $40 million challenge grant came from the Crawford Taylor Foundation to restore an endowment. No one had ever made a larger single philanthropic commitment to an American orchestra. Without it, this project could never have happened. Halen has seen other orchestras “practically go bankrupt when they try to redo their hall, because it can cannibalize their other funding.” Not in the case of the SLSO. “We have built our endowment, and the orchestra is sustainable,” Halen says.

Taylor Kindle wishes her dad could see the results. How repainting brightened the hall he always called “a jewel for the city”; how the new center has “that swoop that is just gorgeous. And it’s going to offer so much to so many people. Especially young people,” Taylor Kindle said. “If they’re interested in recording, or in learning to play an instrument, there will be so much they can take advantage of.”

“This is a wonderful city,” says Finerty, “and I love it dearly, but we have few things that are world-class. We have a world-class monument on the riverfront, and we have a world-class symphony orchestra. Having a facility that’s worthy of that is important. I think this is going to be a beacon for people to come to and enjoy and feel good about St. Louis.”

“The goal,” says Denève, “is to have always more people feeling that they belong—and discovering the transformative power of music. How cathartic it can be. How it can be a companion for life. How it can bring pure joy.”

Jeannette Cooperman is a St. Louis-based freelance writer.