Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

As I blogged this time last year, there is a brand new $400+ million concert hall being built about an hour south of the town I grew up in and it's much closer to being completed. Kansas City's Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts is well under construction and is scheduled to open its doors next season. View the construction photos. The Kauffman Center includes a 1,800 seat proscenium theater and and 1,600 seat concert hall, both of which were meticulously designed to create near perfect acoustics as well as provide optimal viewing for every seat in the house. Hopefully, their design works. Avery Fisher Hall in New York City has been upgraded several times since its original construction, and sadly it is still criticized for its poor acoustics. I have good faith that the Kauffman Center's acoustics will be fantastic, given that the same firm (Nagata Acoustics and project chief Yasuhisa Toyota) who designed the acoustics for Los Angeles' Walt Disney Concert Hall, praised for its excellent sound, is also designing Kansas City's. Again, let's hope it works!