San Diego Symphony Opens Its Iconic Venue

The evolution of the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, the San Diego Symphony’s new, $85 million summer stage that opened with great fanfare last Friday, can be traced back to 2016. That was when the city first gave the orchestra permission to build a $25 million summertime stage by the Bay that could accommodate up to 10,000.

In the intervening years, CEO Martha Gilmer brought the orchestra into financial stability as she pressed ahead with the plan for a scenic outdoor performance space; she also lured Rafael Payare into the orchestra's music directorship. The path to the Rady Shell's debut calls to mind that of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which, until Deborah Borda became president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic couldn’t seem to get off the drawing board. It was Borda, of course, who finally made it happen, and opened the hall in 2003. Two years later, Gustavo Dudamel made his LA Phil debut at the Hollywood Bowl. They asked him back.

Payare used to play horn under Dudamel in the Simón Bolívar Orchestra and eventually became a Dudamel Fellow at the LA Phil. Both are a product of El Sistema; Dudamel was in the audience Friday.

Will Gilmore and the San Diego Symphony follow the success of Borda and the LA Phil? That, apparently, is the hope.

The dramatic preview of opening night: The silhouette of Music Director Rafael Payare

“In the way that Disney Hall solidified the mission and importance of the L.A. Phil and the cultural life of L.A., I think this new venue will do the same for an orchestra that really is on the ascent,” Steven Schick, a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego, tells The New York Times. “Those things do happen with new venues.”

A second iteration for an outdoor venue was approved by the city in summer 2019, this time for a $45 million project. Then the price doubled and construction finally got underway in September 2019, with completion expected in time for al fresco performances the following summer. As the pandemic struck, the plan—not to mention the construction—was put on hold. So Friday night’s gala opening before a sold-out audience of 3,500 (it seats 10,000) was loaded with anticipation and excitement, even before Mason Bates’s specially commissioned opening fanfare, Soundcheck in C Major rang out over the six sound-and-light towers.

Participating in the program, besides the San Diego Symphony and its music director, were Bates (in the orchestra for his piece); bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green with selected arias; pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue); cellist and Payare’s wife Alisa Weilerstein (Saint-Saëns Concerto); and Gladys Knight.  The Rady Shell, named for its lead donors, is intended for all genres. The Symphony will continue to perform in it through November, with Covid-hesitancy keeping it from its habitual venue, Copley Symphony Hall, in downtown San Diego.

The New York Times

Opening night at the San Diego Symphony's Rady Shell