Gonzo Report: Boomers & Gen X-ers gather at Guggenheim

Everything was going my way, including a cancer-free pathology report that finally came just hours before this event: the inaugural concert at the newly constructed Park & Market. It felt like I’d been waiting forever for both. I first heard about this planned “Black Box” theater some years ago. I salivated over the notion of a venue that would both house a million-dollar high-tech sound system and serve as a multipurpose hub that could welcome conferences and lectures in addition to performances. It’s taken some time to get to the public concert phase (they opened last May), but the venue — now christened the Guggenheim Theatre, thanks to the generosity of philanthropists David and Claire Guggenheim — debuted its opening “Intersections” concert series on January 27.

Thanks to a battered truck that leaks oil like the Keystone pipeline, I opted to arrive by Uber and hope that I could find a friendly soul from whom I could hitch a ride home. To call the building impressive is a considerable understatement: it’s huge, coming in at more than 60,000 square feet. As I approached the Market Street entrance, I was struck by the heft of the 10-foot-high glass doors. The split-level first floor takes up the bulk of a city block, and you could probably land a Cessna in the Forum Lobby. There is a gorgeous winding hardwood staircase that leads to the Digital Gym Cinema on the second floor. The ceiling is high enough to induce vertigo, but I noticed that the entire building was eerily quiet.

I had arrived early to get a tour with Mr. Waltz, and I mentioned the sonics, which, given the preponderance of hard surfaces, should have been bouncing soundwaves like a spastic basketball in an empty hallway. Waltz pointed to the thick, sound-absorbent foam on the underside of the structural elements as a mitigating factor.

Back downstairs, we headed to the Guggenheim room, which was already starting to fill up. It’s a spacious 3400-square-foot rectangle with high ceilings. Up above, I spotted a series of intersecting girders and trusses that housed the elaborate lighting system. Dead center on the slightly elevated stage stood a baby grand Yamaha piano, with a pair of Shure KSM 137 microphones positioned about four feet above the open lid on boom stands. The mics fed into a large mixing desk on the north side of the room. It looked like the console from the Starship Enterprise.

The audience was a mix of Boomers and Gen X-ers, and by my count, about 30 percent of them were wearing masks, which I found oddly reassuring. The room itself was wonderfully quiet. It seats around 200, and I noticed that there were fewer than a half-dozen empty chairs. Even though the music had yet to start, the drone of nervous conversation was nearly nonexistent.

The Intersections series is the brainchild of Andrew Waltz in collaboration with violinist and polymath Yale Strom. The opening concert combined the talents of three virtuoso pianists from differing genres: Joshua White, Tina Chong, and Irving Flores. White began with one long continuous medley that referenced everything from Wayne Shorter’s “Nefertiti” to the chestnut “You Are My Sunshine.” He would launch from languid pastels into sudden maelstroms of hyper-kinetic energy and then bring the audience back down again. A friend on the other side of the room told me later that she felt herself levitating during the performance.

Tina Chong displayed some serious virtuosity from an entirely different perspective. Most impressive was her distillation of Beethoven’s sixth piano concerto. Next up was Irving Flores, whose hyper-velocity never wavered from an infectious sense of groove. At that point, I maneuvered from my seat to head to the restroom. I was stunned when I entered the Forum Lobby to see (and hear) Mr. Flores again, this time on the huge LED wall facing Market Street. The visual effects were mindboggling, and the sound was of the highest fidelity.

There are concerts scheduled at the Guggenheim Room for the rest of the year, including Indian tabla virtuoso Samir Chatterjee on February 16 and flamenco guitarist Adam del Monte on March 10. As a music critic, I’m all about true listening rooms, which are exceedingly rare. And I have to say, based on this experience, the Guggenheim at UC San Diego Park & Market is a hit. I was even able to hitch a ride back up the hill into North Park with Joshua White, saving me from shelling out for another inflated Friday night fare.