“Behind some of the world’s most reputed concert halls is a Japanese engineer whose finesse in shaping sound is so perfectly unobtrusive that all listeners hear is the music,” reports Yuri Kageyama on Tuesday (2/7) at the Associated Press. “Yasuhisa Toyota’s talents are coveted as classical music venues are increasingly designed in ‘vineyard style,’ where audiences surround the stage…. He’s designed the acoustics for orchestras in Los Angeles, Helsinki, Paris and Shanghai. Another of his projects, the Elbephilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, opened Jan. 11…. Toyota, 64, is not a musician but was raised listening to and loving classical music. He founded his company in 1971.…. David Howard, a bass clarinetist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has played in several halls Toyota has worked on and says he appreciates the direct, clear and full, and intimate nature of their sound…. His first major overseas project was the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which opened in 2003, for the Los Angeles Philharmonic…. Toyota’s fame started with Tokyo’s majestic Suntory Hall [in] 1986…. Architect Frank Gehry, who worked with Toyota on Disney Hall, says [he] and Toyota donated their work to build a hall, opening in March, for Berlin’s Barenboim-Said Akademie.”
Posted February 9, 2017
