Amazing.

A day off of work means another day of exploring and a blog post!

I had the day off of work today and so I decided to take the bus downtown and check out the Walt Disney Concert Hall.  It had looked very cool in pictures, and I was looking forward to seeing the building in real life.  

Well I took the 45 minute bus ride downtown, got off at 1st street, and started walking a few blocks west.  It was very cool to be in the heart of downtown for the first time.  There's some really cool architecture.  Extremely modern stuff and classic older buildings, also.  On the bus ride over it had been raining kind of hard at times, but I was glad to see it letting up.  Toward the top of a small hill on first street, I started to see the sweeping metalic sides of the concert hall.  As I got closer, I paused across the street and looked straight on at the concert hall.  

It was a beautiful sight, and experiencing the building is almost difficult to put into words.  I paused and took some pictures, then walked closer and began walking around the building.  It seemed as though every view was designed to be so aesthetically perfect and stunning, no matter how you framed the building.  I found myself taking pictures of every angle and all the slopes and billowing sides.  

I was very surprised to find something that I hadn't seen too many pictures of, the large but very intimate garden that wraps around the rear of the hall and sits 30 feet up from the street below.  

As I was exploring every path, walkway and stairway, I was noticing many people holding up large phone-like wands to their ears as they walked around the building, and I realized there was an audio tour.  After I had circled the building once, I knew I hadn't gotten enough and I wanted to learn and hear more about the hall and how it was built.  I walked back to the lobby, where I suddenly felt very hungry and was in no hurry to leave, so I walked over to the Cafe where I bought a very overpriced lunch, but I was inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall, so nothing was going to upset me.  

I finished lunch, walked over and picked up a wand and started the audio tour.  Much to my happiness, it was hosted and narrated by actor John Lithgow, and many people involved in the design and planning of the building spoke on the tour, including Walt's daughter, Diane Disney Miller, and architect genius Frank Gehry.  

To give all of you a little background on the building, it was the brainchild of the late Lillian Disney, Walt's wife.  In 1987, she gave a gift of $50 million for the creation of a new concert hall for the Los Angeles Philharmonic as a tribute to her husband, Walt, and a gift to the people of Los Angeles.  Finally in 2003 after much planning, fundraising and construction, the Hall opened.  Interviews with Frank Gehry and Diane Disney Miller offered great insight into the character and life of Lillian Disney.  Much of the building pays homage to her, most notably an amazing large rose-shaped fountain in the garden and the surprisingly colorful abstracted-flower pattern of the carpet, which is named "Lillian," that covers much of the interior floor.  

The tour offered many great stories and explanations of many aspects of the building's planning, design and construction.  The building itself is a designer's dream.  Famed graphic designer Bruce Mau created all of the signage and did stunning work with an amazing wall of donors in which metallic letters are placed onto a grey industrial felt that looks like stone until you walk up and touch it.

The tour wrapped around, through and outside many amazing spaces in the building, including the garden I mentioned before and past a side of the building that offered a view as to how the complexity of the sides was actually relatively deceptive and was in fact made up of simple straight steel beams.  This is for all of you Engineers and Architects.

The tour led up a few flights of stairs onto an amazing walkway near the top of the building that offered a great view of the rest of downtown LA.  Here you can see a curve of the concert hall frame the beautiful Los Angeles City Hall, made familiar to me by watching the Naked Gun.  You can see here the sky was relatively stormy as this picture was taken on my first circle of the building.   

At one point in the tour, I walked by a woman who was directing visitors along the tour route, and she asked me how I was doing.  I told her I was great and that I thought the building was amazing.  I went on to tell her I was a design student in town for an internship and that I went to school in Cincinnati where we have the works of famous architects as well.  She introduced herself and told me she was actually the head of the tours at the Concert hall and she was covering for another person in her spot, but she recommended that at the end of my audio tour I meet a woman named Joanne in the lobby who she said was their best tour guide and that I ask her any questions I have.  The woman told me she would let Joanne know I was coming.  

So after I finished the tour in the lobby, I returned my wand and walked over to the woman I assumed was Joanne.  I introduced myself to her, a small, older Asian woman, and she had been expecting me.  She asked me if I had time, and I certainly did, so she began to lead me outside to get a great view of the building, and then led me up to the second floor pointing out many of her favorite aspects of the Hall.  This woman definitely loved this building, and it was wonderful to be personally shown around by someone so passionate about where she works. 

At one point I dropped the big question, "Is it pretty impossible to go inside the Hall right now?"

She said she didn't think we would be able to, but then she said she would try.  She got on her walkie-talkie, called her supervisor (the woman I had met earlier) and said, "I'm here with Alex, is it possible to go inside the Hall?"  Soon the supervisor showed up, and we followed her into the elevator up to the 4th floor, got out and followed her over to the door into the Concert Hall.  The supervisor swiped her access card, and the door unlocked, allowing us to walk into the concert hall.  Words can't really describe how beautiful it was.  I knew the outside of the building would be amazing, but I had never expected the interior to be so warm and beautiful, something that Lillian Disney had wanted, I learned on the tour.  I stood at the back of one of the seating sections in the concert hall, listened to Joanne, and asked questions of my own.  The Lillian pattern of the seats, the enormous organ, the beautiful wood; it was amazing.  I was very, very thankful to Joanne and her supervisor for giving me such special privileges, and they made sure I knew that no visitor was every allowed in the Concert Hall.

After going inside the hall, we walked back downstairs, and I thanked Joanne again very much.  We said goodbye, and I walked back out to take some more pictures.  All in all, I spent almost three hours exploring, touring and experiencing the building, and was never tired or bored.  It was full of so much adventure and excitement, I was thrilled to be there.  

I will definitely be doing whatever it takes to go back for a performance to really see and hear the building sing.  Even if I don't make it back for a show, visiting the Walt Disney Concert Hall is an experience that will stay with me for a long time.

Who would have thought that one of the most profoundly moving and spiritual experiences I would have so far in California would revolve around an enormous building made of metal.  It is astonishing that man is capable of creating something as beautiful and powerful as the Walt Disney Concert Hall is, and I don't use those words lightly.  This is a building that needs to be experienced by everyone.  It is full of hope, promise and realized dreams, and is a fitting tribute to Walt.

I am sure he would be proud to be associated with the concert hall and all of the amazing people who put so much effort into its planning, design and construction.  Lillian Disney and Frank Gehry have not only given a great gift to the people of Los Angeles, but to the world.

Wow, I'm sure I sound crazy saying all these things about a heap of metal, but hopefully these pictures I took gave you a bit of an idea what the Walt Disney Concert Hall is like.  If you ever get to see it in person, you might understand more about what I'm talking about.  Yes, all these pictures were taken today by me.  At first it was stormy and rainy, then it cleared up and the sun came out, which is when the majority of these pictures were taken.  

I also saw Cloverfield in Hollywood with Kyle Shepard today, but as awesome as it was, it won't get a blog post right now.

I hope everyone has a great 4 day week!

much love,

Alex