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Port Theatre to Host “Fiddle” Celebration
posted by
paulaclark
on
May 26, 2004 at 7:35 am
PORT ST. JOE — On Friday, May 28th, from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm, the Port Theatre will host a live “Fiddle” celebration with Aisha Moughrabi playing her awesome violin music.
Admission is FREE to the public, as this will be during the Auction preview for our weekly auction in the old Port Theatre. Since the Port Theatre was built with great acoustical engineering, we are planning to begin to host live events that will excite the local population about the future of this building in the center of downtown.
A Music Hall would be a great future use for this building. Come and hear how wonderful it sounds!
Comments (4)
How can it have great acoustics if so little of the house remains? I’d imagine a lack of plaster or a ceiling cavity might affect the acoustics somewhat…
I’m not sure where you gathered that so “little of the house remains”. There was probably never much plaster in the main auditorium, nor was there ever a ceiling cavity that I know about. The acoustical engineer who spent an hour explaining it to my husband said that our building’s dimensions were a major factor in the acoustics. If the building’s dimensions are odd, not divisible by each other, like 200 by 800 or something. The roof is slightly angled toward the southwest and the floors are raked. The angles of the building cause the sound to just keep going! There is another historical building in town that has horrible acoustics. It has lots of ceiling panels and other such things but the sound echoes back at whoever sings or speaks and those trying to hear in the building are unable to hear much. Also, our building is 40 ft tall. We DO have enough remaining of the building to have been accepted on the National Register of Historic Places, so perhaps somehow a description or picture you read or saw wasn’t very representative. I don’t know all the answers to your question, comment, but I do know that this building has great acoustics, and my husband, when he builds his next auction building, will use many of the principles he learned about after owning this building! Hope that helps explain.
Hi, This is Paula’s husband, Wade. She addressed this question pretty well. It was an Accoustical Engineer who marveled at our building’s accoustics. Echo is the enemy of sound clarity. When the sound bounces back at you it’s fun to listen to, but it keeps going and bounces back again and again. If the angles are such that it can’t directly bounce back to you, but rather is sent at an angle to another off-set angle and another offset, it disipates without echo. With echo you hear every sound several times and can’t hear any of them clearly because they are all reaching you over and over at the same time. Maybe I’m giving too much information, but when he showed me this picture of sound, it was a real revelation to me! Our Theatre has the floor sloped, of course, from North to South. It also has the roof structure sloped from East to West, with about a 1/12 pitch (slight). A square or cubed building would echo. A 20x40 would echo. a40x60,80,100,120 would also echo. Our inside walls are aprox. 42x117, which breaks the echo pattern. Combined with the floor and roof angles, the echo doesn’t exist, so sound travels clearly, free of reverberation! It’s amazing to me! It may be just common sense to others, but I needed it explained to me to see it! We have a lady coming this evening to play her fiddle; she’s always been amazed at our accoustics and asked if we’d let her bring her fiddle by…I can hardly wait!
Though the building was without a roof for 10 years before we bought it, the walls, the sloped floor and the steel roof structural system were still in great shape. The new roof system went on that steel at the same angle as the old and capturing the same beautiful accoustics!
Have a great day!
Wade
Everyone loved the music during our preview! We hope to do it again!