Kyle Plays Disney

IN my long embattled relationship with Frank Gehry when I was the design critic for the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s and after for public radio and television, one incident stands out, occurring in 2004, a year after Disney Hall was dedicated. The occasion was a family event, revealed in a review I did then and remebered here upon architect Gehry's passing:
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“Dear listeners, indulge me,” I prefaced the script that is included in my book, An Urban Odyssey (Academic Studies Press, 2024). It also appears in Commonedge https://commonedge.org/the-con... and is abridged here:.

“My antithetical feelings for Disney Hall continue, especially after attending a concert there that included my15 year-old son, Kyle, performing on the bassoon. Parental pride can certainly cloud one’s critical faculties.”
“Ever since the Hall began to take shape a decade ago, I have found it a particularly difficult project to comment on—not only because of its arbitrary and indulgent design, but also because of its hype….

“The sails and swirls of the stainless steel aside, the Hall on a personal level is an international icon for its architect, and a laurel for its boosters .. But , however viewed, its significance cannot be denied.having become a symbol of the cultural aspirations of Southern California..
“Generally I have welcomed the building, which I’ve described as an arresting ego encrusted icon, That is until last week.”

I then professed that all pretense of being a critic faded when my youngest progeny performed with the Festival Wind Ensemble as part of an evening program staged by the Idyllwild Arts Foundation. He was excited.
I remember being excited, too, and proud. Of course I had attended concerts in the hall when writing my commentaries, but now having to meet my family in the lobby and then go to hear my son perform heightened my anxiety and also my awareness of the building’s design.

The lobby, I wrote, “does not work particularly well as a welcoming space nor as a place to comfortably meet and mingle, as in most great music halls,that sadly it was more like a multiplex movie house.”
I also contended there was no focus in the main lobby, while the interior spaces seemed squeezed to accommodate the exterior shape, and that there problems with acoustics.

But Kyle dismissed my perhaps over exacting observations—that they were irrelevant to the thrill of performing in a clearly singular space before an appreciative audience. And while to me it was an illustration of the importance design makes in shaping experiences, I was thrilled for him.

As for Frank…several years later I told him about the concert at Disney Hall, and the pure elation of Kyle performing there.
He smiled, and then admitted to me that a 1988 column I had written as a critic for the Times praising his entry in the design competition for Disney Hall had been critical to him getting the commission.
Then, typically, he added, “Of course, my design was the best.”