ASO hopes to cash in with new venue

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will open its new amphitheater in Alpharetta Saturday night with a program of classical hits, capped by the "1812 Overture." Hundreds of student musicians will join in the bombast.

The inaugural show at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park also is the beginning of a bigger juggling act for the ASO, as it tries to fulfill a half-dozen ambitions — from enriching the northern suburb's entertainment options to marketing the orchestra beyond its core audience to fighting a fierce arms race with a rival concert promoter.

At the heart of the $35 million amphitheater is the ASO's aim of stabilizing its long-term finances.

As a result, the 12,000-seat venue is already helping reinvent how a symphony orchestra does business in the 21st century.

The state-of-the-art outdoor pavilion, owned and operated by the ASO and its parent organization, the Woodruff Arts Center, hugs a naturally bowl-shaped hillside on a 45-acre site across Ga. 400 from North Point Mall. It's the third and largest of the ASO's performance spaces, joining 1,750-seat Symphony Hall in Midtown and the 6,500-seat, open-air Chastain Park Amphitheatre in Buckhead.

Encore Park's first month of events points to how the venue will be used — and make money. Four nights after the ASO's debut, veteran rockers the Eagles open a sold-out, four-night stand. On May 24, Alpharetta High School will hold its graduation ceremonies there, one of many community events filling the gaps in the calendar.

While the ASO's "Classic Chastain" summer concert series will remain unchanged, the ASO's classical summer season, typically a handful of events performed in Symphony Hall, will be relocated to Encore Park. The orchestral performances will alternate all summer with a variety of pop stars, mostly nostalgia acts from the 1970s, including Styx, Stevie Nicks and the Steve Miller Band.

Balancing art, finance

The new amphitheater, says ASO chief financial officer Don Fox, who has led the project since its inception in 2003, "exists to expand what [the ASO] does in terms of the mission of the institution, as performer, presenter, educator and community good citizen. It builds on the competencies we've displayed over many years." Still, with attendance numbers for its classical concerts in Symphony Hall mostly stagnant over recent seasons, and with an accumulated debt of $4.5 million, Encore is seen as an integral part of what Fox called the organization's "financial solution."

The venue is funded by 30-year bonds issued by Alpharetta's development authority, plus internal loans from the Woodruff Arts Center and several smaller grants. The bonds, which received strong ratings from New York investment analysts, are expected to be repaid by amphitheater revenue.

At an annual operating cost of $20 million, the new venue will boost the ASO's annual budget to about $50 million by fiscal year 2009, placing the ASO among the biggest-budget orchestras in America.

In operating two outdoor pavilions — the first orchestra in the country to do so — the ASO strengthens its muscle as a concert presenter in the metro area.

ASO president Allison Vulgamore has spoken of the nonprofit orchestra's need to "embrace an entrepreneurial spirit" in order to remain fiscally fit.

She describes Encore Park as the next step in building financial security, with the final piece of the puzzle the still-a-dream new Symphony Center. (The campaign to build that $300 million venue was put on "pause" with just a third of the total raised.)

"You can't disaggregate the pieces of our business," Vulgamore said. "It's a holistic enterprise. Creativity involves taking some risks and also looking into the future and investing. We've always been about balancing artistic growth with financial soundness."

As the ASO wades deeper into the music-broker business, its core identity — historic and contemporary classical music played by its 95 unionized musicians — becomes an increasingly slender wedge of the whole pie, with ramifications yet to be explored.

A musical arms race?

Whatever the ASO's ultimate aims, music industry analysts see Encore Park's opening as the latest salvo in the ASO's battle with Live Nation, the country's dominant concert promoter, which owns Lakewood Amphitheatre in south Atlanta and controls half of Chastain's summer season. (The city of Atlanta owns Chastain.)

Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of PollStar, which tracks concert trends, observed that Encore Park is the only new amphitheater in the country that's competing head-to-head with Live Nation for customers.

The massive Lakewood holds 19,000 people total, but only 7,000 seats are reserved — the same number of reserved seats as Encore Park.

"The real money isn't in the lawn [seating], which most shows never sell out, but in the reserved seating," Bongiovanni said.

"Atlanta might be an exception, but the future isn't healthy" for outdoor mega-pavilions like Lakewood, he added. "Overall, [these pavilions] gross more money from fewer and fewer acts. As the aging 'classic' rock and baby boomers fade, and it's already started, the 20,000-seaters, like Lakewood, will seem too big."

That sentiment is echoed by Brad Syna, general manager of the Variety Playhouse, a 1,000-seat theater in Atlanta's Little Five Points neighborhood.

"In recent decades, hip-hop and R&B have dominated the music biz, but these styles don't attract the same crowds as the nostalgia acts from the 1960s and '70s," Syna said. "There's a lot of money to be made, but you have to wonder what'll happen when Rod Stewart and Jimmy Buffett are too old to tour. Who'll go to amphitheaters anymore?"

Peter Conlon, Live Nation's local concert promoter, says he's braced for a long-term fight. "Money's a factor in booking acts, but this is a relationship-based business," he said. "People look for the vibe of a venue."

'Total ambience' a key

Encore Park incorporates many standard features of pavilions, but one innovation is the white fabric covering a 60-foot high roof, which diffuses sunlight during the day and can serve as a light-show canvas at night.

"It's an amplified venue, not a concert hall," said Larry Kirkegaard, the Chicago acoustician whose firm designed the sound at the recently opened Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, among other local performance spaces. "What matters [at Encore] is the quality of the sound system and the microphones and the sound man who adjusts the dials for each performance."

Encore's design, by KKE Architects of Minnesota, includes wide patron seats, good sight lines and, backstage, humidity-controlled instrument storage and relatively posh facilities for the ASO. "We're figuring that the average rock 'n' roll band will appreciate the improved quality that an orchestra demands," said Trevor Ralph, Encore's general manager. The amenities, he said, will help attract blockbuster artists.

From the audience's perspective, said Bongiovanni, "the success of Lakewood and Chastain proves that people in Atlanta like outdoor shows. Encore's success will depend on the experience: the traffic, the parking, the show, going to the bathroom and getting a hot dog, and getting home."

Consulting reams of research, ASO officials are confident that parking and traffic patterns will flow as well as any in car-snarled metro Atlanta.

"The acts are the primary driver," Bongiovanni concluded, "but with [Lakewood and Chastain] in competition, it's also about the total ambience of the place."

INSIDE: A guide to the Verizon Amphitheatre. In Arts & Books.