Royce Hall
Royce Hall is a building on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Designed by the Los Angeles firm of Allison & Allison (James Edward Allison, 1870–1955, and his brother David Clark Allison, 1881–1962) and completed in 1929, it is one of the four original buildings on UCLA's Westwood campus and has come to be the defining image of the university.[1] The brick and tile building is in the Lombard Romanesque style, and once functioned as the main classroom facility of the university and symbolized its academic and cultural aspirations. Today, the twin-towered front remains the best known UCLA landmark. The 1800-seat auditorium was designed for speech acoustics and not for music; by 1982 it emerged from successive remodelings as a regionally important concert hall and main performing arts facility of the university.
Address
Named after Josiah Royce, a California-born philosopher who received his bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley in 1875, the building's exterior is composed of elements borrowed from numerous northern Italian sources.[1] While very different in their composition and near-symmetry, the two towers of Royce make an abstract reference to those of the famous Abbey Church of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan.[1] A building of very similar form on a much smaller scale was a centerpiece of the College of California campus in Oakland in 1860, the predecessor of the University of California.[2]
Auditorium: 1929, 1984 and 1998
Auditorium during the Seismic Renovation, 1995
Auditorium, 1998
The console of the Royce Hall pipe organ
Exterior and interior[edit]
Royce hall is a large seven-story brick building, excluding the basement and sub basement. Only the basement and the first three floors are open to the public, the large towers have seven floors. The main facade of the building consists of two wings and a central part.
The main part of the building also contains several technical levels above the third floor which contain theater equipment.
Recording venue[edit]
Although not known for its acoustics prior to renovations in the 1980s,[13] Royce Hall was the venue for a number of landmark recordings of the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of Zubin Mehta. The recordings, made from 1967 through 1978 and recorded by the Decca label, were intended as hi-fi showpieces and contributed to the LA Phil's reputation for dazzle and glitz.[14] Decca's engineers, initially under the supervision of John Culshaw, utilized two and a half tons of recording equipment in their efforts. To counter Royce Hall's disadvantageous acoustic profile, the engineers had a temporary stage platform constructed, which extended onto the floor of the hall to move the orchestra forward and to the center of the room; the platform was removed between recordings and reassembled as needed.[13][15] The focal point of the Royce Hall recordings under Mehta were showpieces of the 19th and 20th centuries, including noteworthy recordings of Stravinsky's Petrushka (recorded in 1967) and The Rite of Spring (recorded in 1969),[16][17] Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 (recorded twice, in 1967 and 1976),[13] Copland's Lincoln Portrait (recorded in 1968 with narrator Gregory Peck),[18] Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra (recorded in 1969) and An Alpine Symphony (recorded in 1976),[19][20] Holst's The Planets (recorded in 1971),[21][22] Dvořák's Symphony No. 8 and Symphony No. 9 (both recorded in 1975),[23][24][25] and Mahler's Symphony No. 3 (recorded 1978; Mehta's final recording with the orchestra as music director).[13][26] Although initially dismissed by classical music sophisticates, including contemporary reviewers in the Los Angeles Times, the Royce Hall recordings have subsequently become regarded as classics, with particular acclaim focusing on the later recordings.[13][14] Subsequent to Mehta's tenure, the Philharmonic would return to Royce Hall for recordings with other labels, including Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 and Symphony No. 5 (recorded in 1986; conducted by André Previn and released by Philips Classics),[27] and Stravinsky's Violin Concerto (recorded in 1992; conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and released by Sony Classical).[28]
Royce Hall has occasionally been used for the recording of film scores. Portions of John Williams' scores for A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) and Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) were recorded at the hall.[29][30] Maurice Jarre recorded his score for the Japanese film The Setting Sun (1992) at the venue.[31]
Starting in the 1960s and continuing to the present day, Royce Hall has also been utilized for the recording of contemporary popular music, specifically for live concert recordings. Ravi Shankar's early live album India's Most Distinguished Musician in Concert was recorded at the venue on November 19, 1961.[32] Jazz bassist Charles Mingus recorded his live album Music Written for Monterey 1965 (1965) at UCLA after his planned session at the Monterey Jazz Festival that year was cut short.[33][34] Neil Young's song "The Needle and the Damage Done", featured on the album Harvest, was recorded during a live performance on January 30, 1971.[35] Frank Zappa recorded his live album Orchestral Favorites at the hall on September 19, 1975, although the album itself was not released until 1979.[36] Portions of Earth, Wind & Fire's album Faces (1980) were recorded at the hall.[37] Tori Amos recorded a live album, performed as part of her Original Sinsuality Tour and released as part of the set The Original Bootlegs (2005), at Royce Hall.[38]
