MUSIC FOR THE EYES CROWDS, LEADERS DEDICATE $274 MILLION DISNEY HALL.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Following a 17-year wait, the surrealistic-looking Walt Disney Concert Hall was dedicated Monday as Los Angeles civic leaders admired the crown jewel of a three-decade effort to rejuvenate downtown.

``I think this is capable of handling the music of the angels,'' county Supervisor Don Knabe said. ``The mixture of a high-tech music center on the inside and an incredible new design for the world on the outside is one of those matches almost made in heaven.''

With its more than 22 million pounds of glistening steel and more than 6,000 organ pipes, the $274 million hall in downtown Los Angeles was officially dedicated by Gov. Gray Davis, Mayor James Hahn and philanthropist Eli Broad as hundreds looked on.

The new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Master Chorale, it is the fourth facility of the Music Center of Los Angeles County, which includes the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Ahmanson Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum.

The hall was built with mostly private donations, including $75 million in seed money from Lillian Disney, widow of Walt Disney.

Architect Frank Gehry told the crowd about conversations he had with Lillian Disney. He said she loved flowers, gardens and music.

``I showed her a bowl of white roses, and I said, 'I'm going to make a flower for you.' It's kind of a flower, I hope it is, for her.''

Gehry, who moved to Los Angeles from Canada in 1947 and grew up in a ``very poor'' family just down the street from his creation, said his dream for the City of Angels wouldn't have been possible without the use of computers.

``I was trying to express movement with inert materials,'' Gehry said. ``It's a thing artists and architects have done for centuries. Why express movement? In our day, it seems that movement epitomizes our world. Everything is moving. Everything is fast, and trying to express that as a way to express feeling.''

The hall was conceived in May 1987, when Lillian Disney made the initial gift to build an additional performance space on county land as a tribute to her late husband. In the early 1990s, the hall's future came into question as a deep recession, riots and the Northridge Earthquake shook the city.

``This city was in a funk, and it was almost like nothing was going right,'' Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said.

In 1995, then-Mayor Richard Riordan, Broad and Andrea Van de Kamp, then chairman of the Music Center, committed to raise the funds needed to build the hall.

``Los Angeles is now home to the most architecturally brilliant and acoustically sophisticated symphony hall in the world,'' Broad said. ``With Walt Disney Concert Hall as its crown jewel, Los Angeles' Grand Avenue will become the center for the performing arts, culture and education in Southern California.''

``For many years, people have associated Disneyland with California,'' Davis said. ``Starting today, however, the words 'Disney' and 'California' will be forever linked to world-class music and artistic performance right here in Los Angeles.''

The hall also possesses an extraordinary acoustic quality, far surpassing the sound quality at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

The focus of Gehry's design is the 2,265-seat concert hall auditorium. The Douglas fir walls and billowing, sail-like wooden ceiling give guests the sense of being within a great ship. In the center is a giant pipe organ, towered over by wooden beams containing the organ pipes that workers call the ``bag of french fries.''

Simi Valley resident Buddy Percin, former head carpenter for the auditorium and now a Music Center engineer, said the hall itself is an instrument.

``The stage is covered with Alaskan yellow cedar, and it's made to resonate sound itself,'' Percin said. ``So the whole hall acts like an instrument. If you go down to the stage, you'll see little pucker holes where the cellos are poked right into the stage and the stage itself becomes part of the orchestra.''

Outside, Hahn was nearly blinded by the brilliance of sunlight reflected by some of the 6,000 stainless steel panels on the building's exterior.

``This place really gleams, doesn't it?'' Hahn said. ``I think it has a UV factor of about 100.''

``It's just like being in a suntan booth,'' Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich added.

Van de Kamp said the opening of the hall was expected to dramatically increase the number and type of performances at the Music Center and boost attendance by 38 percent from 1.6 million to 2.2 million a year. Unlike most concert halls, the hall lobby is accessible from the street and will remain open during the day for residents and visitors to enjoy.

From Nov. 1 to Nov. 29, visitors will have the opportunity to enjoy self- guided tours of the concert hall between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., except on Thanksgiving Day and matinee days. For information, call the Music Center at [phone] or visit its Web site at www.musiccenter.org.

The dedication of the concert hall follows the announcement last month of an unprecedented city-county agreement to design a $1.25 billion park and residential-retail area near Disney Hall.

``This is one of the great days in Los Angeles history,'' Yaroslavsky said. ``This is a spectacular building. It's not only a gift to Los Angeles County, but it's a gift to mankind. Generations will benefit from this hall for years to come.

``It speaks about what Los Angeles is. It's creativity, it's mobility, it's a sense of possibility, optimism and can-do.''

Troy Anderson, [phone]

troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, map

Photo:

(1 -- color) A crowd gathers in front of the new Walt Disney Concert Hall downtown Monday, during the dedication ceremony.

Nick Ut/Associated Press

(2 -- color) Dancers whirl about during a musical performance Monday at the dedication of the Disney Hall.

(3) Visitors take in the swirling lines of the lobby of the Disney Concert Hall following the ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer

Map:

Disney Concert Hall

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