One of the most storied performance venues in the world revitalizes with an emphasis on systems technology

The Apollo is an intimate space, with three levels of seating all in close proximity to the stage.

DEAR FRIENDS AND PATRONS: The opening of the 125th Street Apollo Theatre (sic) next Friday night will mark a revolutionary step in the presentation of stage shows. ...The phrase “the finest theater in Harlem” can be aptly applied to this redecorated and refurbished temple of amusement. ...High-fidelity RCA sound equipment, the same as used by Radio City Music Hall, and an innovation in public address systems, has been installed, and we feel certain that the 125th Street Apollo Theater will be an entertainment edifice that Harlem will take pride in showing off to neighborhood communities.

So read the notice in the theatrical section of the New York Age newspaper, posted by theater owner Sidney Cohen on January 14th, 1934. Less than two weeks later, the previously “whites-only” venue originally built in 1914 and known as Hurtig and Seamon’s New Burlesque Theater opened its doors to black audiences for the first time.

The evening’s entertainment featured “a colored revue” called Jazz a la Carte featuring Ralph Cooper Sr., Benny Carter and his Orchestra and “16 Gorgeous Hot Steppers.” The Apollo Theater, with a newly installed RCA public address system, was open for business.

Nearly 70 years later, The Apollo Theater has once again undergone a complete upgrade of its sound system, and this time around, the only RCA components are the phono jacks on the CD and cassette players. Approaching its 100-year benchmark, the 1,400-seat Apollo is in the midst of a total restoration process to replenish one of Harlem’s last cultural and artistic jewels to its former grandeur.

Following approval by The Apollo Theater Foundation, a multi-phase renovation/ restoration process began in January 2002. But prior, several experienced theatrical professionals joined The Apollo staff to make key contributions to this process.

David Rodriguez was recruited as the theater’s executive director, offering plenty of specific experience in the management of major venue renovations and systems upgrades. He joined The Apollo administration fresh from completing renovations at several notable theaters, including the John Harms Center for the Arts in Englewood, New Jersey, and Carnegie Hall in New York City.

(left to right) Greg Mann (sound engineer), Steve Jones (technical director), and Danielle Peak (sound technician/lighting designer) at the Apollo.

Veteran production manager and lighting designer Steve Jones took over the keyrole of technical director following 17 years as production manager of Bellefonte Enterprises. “In my many years of experience touring around the world, I saw a lot of venues with decent enough equipment, but it didn’t mesh with the dynamics of the space,” he explains. “It worked but did little to enhance the production and performance values. That’s certainly not what we wanted here at The Apollo, so we were dedicated in our effort to go the proper route to install a system that addressed the particular needs of this performance space.”

The theater foundation’s board of directors, administrative staff and technical crews were all in agreement that renovations should commence with the total redesign and upgrade of the theater’s sound and light systems. “To their credit,” Rodriguez notes, “the board agreed with the creative and technical crew members that technical quality and usability of the space needed to take priority over other needs in this phase of the renovation. We were all on the same page.”

There was also agreement that this goal could only be achieved through professional design and installation of new systems rather than simply adding more equipment to the existing system. Another important factor was the desire for consistency and quality for every act, moving away from individual sound (and lighting) systems being brought in for a given show. “That’s a particularly difficult way to operate,” Jones points out, “especially in a historic house like The Apollo.”

Jaffe Holden Acoustics of Norwalk, Connecticut, working with the production team, provided the sound system design in addition to researching and developing the bid specifications for the new systems. The equipment supply contract was awarded to SPL Integrated Solutions, with the company’s New York-based operation (located in Mt. Vernon, New York) also supervising installation efforts by the in-house crew.

Rodriguez and his staff made industrious use of the performance records of the theater’s recent past, studying the technical riders of every performer who has appeared at the theater over the past five years. This information served as a systems specification cornerstone.

Meanwhile, Jaffe Holden Acoustics and SPL furthered the information gathering process by conducting personal interviews with Apollo personnel, holding department meetings and doing many on-site inspections of the facility. Key players in the process included head of audio Mike Jenkins, a 12-year veteran of The Apollo, as well as Danielle Peake, who has served for almost a decade as a staff audio technician.

RELIABLE AND WICKED LOUD
The Apollo’s new house and monitor sound system designs were driven by the need to accommodate a thoroughly diverse roster of acts, ranging from modern hip-hop to subtle jazz, comedians to amateur nights, theatrical productions and everything in between. Another significant aspect is the large number of television shows filmed/taped at The Apollo, requiring any system solution to work around the need for clean camera sightlines.

“Acoustically the space is fairly dead, which lends itself well to an amplified audio program because there’s not a lot of added impact from bounce and spill of audio energy,” adds David W Robb, a principal of Jaffe Holden Acoustics. A testament to its origins as a vaudeville venue, the room is intimate, with its 1,400 seats spread among a main floor topped by dual balconies that begin their upward rake just 25 - 30 feet from the stage. Two levels of private boxes reside directly next to each side of the stage.

The loudspeaker design in this first phase will be somewhat modified during phase two of the renovation process, when infrastructure and architectural issues will be addressed more fully. For example, adequate load-ready loudspeaker rigging points will be implemented. For now, however, the sound team devised a flexible approach that allows loudspeakers to be placed where needed to deliver adequate coverage for any given application.

This, in turn, partly influenced the decision that modeling of the space was not needed for this phase of the project. Jaffe Holden Acoustics’ Sam Brandt, who served as project manager, notes, “A venue like this is pretty straightforward, because there are only certain places loudspeakers can be located. So you take this fact, combine it with the knowledge of hundreds of theaters we’ve worked with in the past, and make educated decisions as to what goes where, why and for optimum performance.”

And then there are the brass tacks. A straightforward production directive came from years of dealing with a highly unreliable sound system. “You can put fancy language to it, but at some level it comes down to this: make it absolutely reliable, and make it wicked loud,” Robb says. This in turn influences component selection, with SPL’s Felix Robinson indicating that it did play a role in the decision to go with Crest amplification to drive all loudspeakers.