Overture Magazine 2019-20 BSO_Overture_Jan Feb | Page 10

The
BSO
at
Strathmore
By Janet E. Bedell
A Vital Partnership Turns Fifteen
In February 2005, The Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda opened the doors for its first public concert:
a performance by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra led by then-Music Director Yuri Temirkanov and featuring the
superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma. An impressed critic for The Washington Post promptly dubbed the 1,976-seat concert hall:
“the best place to hear an orchestra the Washington area has ever known.”
F
ifteen years later, the BSO has played more
than 400 concerts at Strathmore. It is the only
major symphony orchestra in the country to
have two homes in two different metropolitan
areas. “Many orchestras would feel fortunate to
have just one concert hall of the caliber of the
Meyerhoff and Strathmore; we are blessed to have two,” comments
BSO President and CEO Peter Kjome. “Our consistent presence
in Montgomery County makes the BSO a major cultural asset not
only of Baltimore but of the State of Maryland because it now
performs in both of the state’s major metropolitan areas.” He
forecasts that Strathmore will remain a vital component of the
BSO’s future growth and success.
A Dream Twenty Years in the Making
As Eliot Pfanstiel, Strathmore’s CEO from 1983–2018, explains, the
idea of The Music Center began more than 30 years ago. “Mont-
gomery County wanted to have an arts center, and it bought the
Strathmore Mansion in 1983 for that purpose. I was working for the
County then, and they asked me to manage it.” Soon the Mansion’s
concerts and other activities were drawing substantial audiences:
“We started having 1,500 people out on the lawn, and if you had a
rainstorm, it was obvious you needed a roof over it.”
In 1985, Strathmore’s Board members decided to pursue building
a new concert hall. Pfanstiel laughs: “If we’d known at the time how
much it would have taken to pull this off, we probably wouldn’t
have had the courage to do it!” In 1996, BSO Executive Director
John Gidwitz and BSO Chairman of the Board Calman J. “Buddy”
Zamoiski came to meet with Pfanstiel. “They were looking for a
summer home for the BSO beyond Oregon Ridge. They were in-
terested in an audience that could support the place and somewhere
they could take root and grow. We shared what we had in mind
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for Strathmore’s future, and the BSO signed on as a Founding
Partner. So now we would have a major orchestra to play here
—just what we needed to bring the Center to life.”
Matters progressed, and by 1998 a public/private partnership was
forged with the State of Maryland, which provided $30 million in
support, matched by the same amount from Montgomery County
and a somewhat larger portion contributed by private donors. In
the meantime, the County was growing rapidly: from the 1980s
to today, its population has increased from 500,000 to 1.5 million.
Groundbreaking for the new Music Center began in 2001.
After visiting concert halls throughout the country, Strath-
more hired the team that had recently built Ozawa Hall at
Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony’s summer home: William
Rawn Associates Architects of Boston to join Grimm & Parker
Architects of Bethesda; acousticians Kirkegaard Associates of
Chicago; and Theatre Projects Consultants of Norwalk, CT.
“Acoustics, aesthetics and access were our guidelines,” recalls
Monica Hazangeles, Strathmore’s current CEO who was also
heavily involved in the project. Accessibility was enhanced by
the site of The Music Center, perched on a gentle rise adjacent
to the about-to-be-opened Grosvenor Station of D.C.’s Metro
and its 500-car garage.
World-Class Acoustics in a Welcoming Environment
“We knew we’d hit the jackpot on acoustics when we heard the
BSO’s first rehearsal in The Music Center,” says Pfanstiel. “When
Art Garfunkel was here, he said it was one of the top ten halls
acoustically he’d ever performed in.” At a recent concert by Chris
Thile, a quarter dropped in one of the balconies, Hazangeles re-
members. “Chris actually stopped the concert to point that out
to the audience. He wasn’t upset; he was just marveling that the
acoustics were so fine you could hear every flip that quarter made!”