Singapore’s premier “adaptable” concert hall reaches its next phase of evolution

In partnership with Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay

For the past two decades, the Concert Hall in Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay has been where you go in Singapore to hear live music presented with startling intimacy, no matter how big the name or grand the occasion.

It’s a balancing act that the venue has achieved since its much-publicised opening in 2002 – one owed to careful engineering that will enter a new phase this year, as the hall undergoes renovation from September 2024 to March 2025 – a bid to “renew its lease of great music and great shows”, as Esplanade’s Head of Technical Production Kenny Wong tells NME.

Concerts featuring a wide breadth of music have graced the concert hall – classical music orchestras, traditional music ensembles, glitzy opera singers, jazz quartets and buzzy indie rock bands. Some contemporary acts that have performed there include N.E.R.D., Steve Reich, The Roots, Grizzly Bear, Sunset Rollercoaster, Tinariwen and Feist.

“It’s a fantastic venue for good musicians, but it can be an unforgiving one, too,” says Wong, who first joined the Esplanade in 1997 – a year before construction of the national performing arts centre began. Wong partnered with the team led by world-renowned acoustician Russell Johnson, who brought the concert hall to life.

The team abided by Johnson’s philosophy: that all elements and features of the hall, including its aesthetic design, are “doing one thing”, which is to produce excellent sound – no matter the style or genre or music played.

Every element in the hall plays a part in its resulting sound quality – the material of its seats, walls, curtains, drapes and doors. “Even the little ridges on the balcony, they all have acoustic functions,” notes Christel Hon, Esplanade’s assistant head of music, who was trained by Tateo Nakajima, a key member of Johnson’s acoustic team.

Building an “adaptable” hall according to Johnson’s standards meant it should be able to host live performances, whether amplified or acoustic, without any discrepancy in sound quality. Hon leans on multiple elements of the hall, including its acoustic canopy, to achieve a “customised setting” for each and every musician. When a seasoned artist’s performance experience meets a tailored acoustic treatment in the hall, “it can be quite magical.”

This “unique” aspect of the Esplanade Concert Hall is correlated with its programming, says Hon: “It’s because of this flexibility that we’ve opened our minds on how we can use the space.” Esplanade subverts perceptions of being a “high-brow” venue through its regular programming of diverse music forms: “It allows us to bring new and different audiences into the concert hall.”

Ensuring an effortlessly adaptable venue involves upholding certain inviolable standards: As its surroundings got a lot louder over the years, the concert hall had to remain a quiet refuge. “‘Nothing should interrupt the sound inside,’” Wong recalls Johnson once saying. Soundproofing wasn’t easy to achieve at Esplanade, which is by the mouth of the Singapore River, on what Wong remembers as a “very problematic plot of land”.

He explains: “Number one, it’s next to water. And, [when Esplanade was first constructed], the water was tidal. So when there’s a storm, it hits the seawall. That creates a lot of noise, a lot of vibration. Secondly, even though they weren’t built yet, the MRT [train] lines were already plotted out. And they were very, very close to us.”

The hall’s toughest test came in the form of the inaugural F1 Singapore Grand Prix, which was held in 2008 at the Marina Bay Street Circuit – just a stone’s throw away from Esplanade. Luckily, it went well. “It’s so quiet [in the hall] that you actually feel that pressure [of silence] in your ear,” says Wong.

So far, the Esplanade Concert Hall has been able to withstand the roar of race cars and public transport. Why renovate now, then?

After smaller fixes over the years, it came time to rework the “guts” of the concert hall, Wong tells us. “Rather than do patchwork, let’s do a major one.” Plans for renovation factor in entirely new digital infrastructure for the team to work with, which can make current and future presentation formats, such as livestreaming, much easier.

Aside from that, Esplanade intends to upgrade its walls, service its 22-year-old pipe organ, and switch all old tungsten lightbulbs to new LED ones.

Even light, Wong notes, affects the sound quality of the music. “During its construction, the choice of lights, even down to the exit sign, all had acoustic impact,” he remembers. However, the move is necessary. “Tungsten has to stop somewhere because our electricity bill is killing us. And while it is killing us, it’s also killing the planet.”

It’s clear the concert hall is a precious space not just for Singapore and Esplanade, but for its longtime stewards. Its first-ever temporary closure means the team will have to adapt until it reopens.

“I’ll feel a little bit empty, because I’ve spent so much time in the concert hall,” says Hon, who has worked at Esplanade since 2005. “But I look forward to March, when it will be better than ever.”

Wong hopes the renovations will retain the hall’s best qualities as first designed by Johnson, who passed away in 2007, while letting its team achieve bigger things there. “My hope is that the audience won’t [notice] a difference,” he says. “Then we would have succeeded.”

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