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Scott Timberg in the L.A. Times dares go where not many in the local media have ventured -- to talk to people who don't much like the Frank Gehry-designed Disney Hall, which opens downtown next month. He credits a chilly review by Sam Hall Kaplan on KCRW and in the Downtown News for getting the snowball rolling. Writes Timberg:
Call it schadenfreude or call it inevitable blowback, but a distinct rumble of Disney Hall disenchantment has become audible at cocktail parties and in the aisles of record stores. The talk is of the high price of tickets, the risky acoustics of "vineyard-style" concert venues, the similarities between Disney Hall and Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
For some, it's also the cramped site and the politics of spending so much on a concert hall. Audio of Gehry on "Airtalk with Larry Mantle" yesterday.
Update 10 a.m.: Roger L. Simon, recently reviewed himself, has a personal reaction to the story.