Back in Uihlein Hall — barely

The Milwaukee Symphony will play at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall as scheduled, at 11:15 a.m. Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday, April 15-16.

The concerts were very much in question, because of unresolved damage to the orchestra’s acoustical shell. Officials of the MSO and the Marcus Center decided Wednesday afternoon to go ahead as planned.

Last weekend, you’ll recall, the MSO hastily moved its Pops concerts with Marvin Hamlisch to the Riverside Theater because Uihlein Hall was unusable. A failure in a winch or the counterweight system caused the 27,000-pound ceiling of the acoustical shell to hit the stage deck on April 5. Last Friday, technicians were still figuring out how to get the shell safely out of the way. As of Wednesday, the damaged shell was up and in its stowed position aloft.

But the orchestral still can’t use the shell this weekend. Playing on the Uihlein stage with no shell, according to MSO marketing VP Susan Loris, is unthinkable because the sound would go straight up into the flyspace with no structure to bounce it into the house. The MSO would have canceled the concerts rather than turn into the Marcel Marceu Symphony Orchestra.

The MSO’s Larry Tucker and Marcus Center assistant technical director George Batayias believe they’ve come up with an acceptable temporary fix. They will raise the organ box to create some reflective surface behind the orchestra. The orchestra will move downstage as far as possible. They will borrow two large plastic sound reflectors from the Florentine Opera and place them behind the organ. The Marcus crew is building temporary side walls and cobbling together a ceiling.

Construction will go on through Thursday, the orchestra will be breaking it in during the Friday matinee concert. The MSO, which usually rehearses in Uihlein, has worked in the Bradley Pavilion this week. No one will know how this will work until Friday.

The aesthetics and the acoustics of such an arrangement might leave something to be desired, but from the point of view of the MSO and the Marcus Center, it beats canceling the concert. Orchestra officials feel that while the Riverside would do for an amplified Pops concert, it wouldn’t work for a classical evening. The other likely alternative, the Pabst Theater, seats just over 1,300. The MSO has pre-sold more than 2,000 tickets for Saturday. A touring Beauty and the Beast is in the Milwaukee Theatre, which in any case is a very poor orchestral venue.

So it was pretty much Uihlein or bust this week for the MSO.

The MSO season runs through June. Heidi Lofy, sales and marketing VP for the Marcus Center, which owns the shell, said Wednesday that three possible courses lie ahead:

1. The shell will be repaired and back in place for the MSO’s next concerts, Cirque de la Symphonie Pops set for April 29-May 1.

2. The temporary shell being cobbled together this week will prove good enough to finish out the season.

3. If 1 and 2 prove impossible or unacceptable, the Marcus might be able to rent a shell for the remainder of the season.

In some ways, the schedule is helping. The Marcus Broadway Series is bringing a touring Les Miserables to Uihlein Hall from April 19-24. That will give technicians time to plan a fix or find a rental shell.

In the mean time, the MSO and the Marcus Center are asking their patrons for indulgence with less than optimal concert conditions.

After all, the roof did fall in on them.

Concerts this week at the MSO begin at 11:15 a.m. Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday, April 15-16. A Kinderkonzert is set for 2 p.m. Sunday. Guest conductor Gilbert Varga will lead the Friday and Saturday programs. The soloist will be pianist Kirill Gerstein, a rising young Russian pianist. Tickets are $25-$95 at the MSO website, the MSO ticket line (414 291-7605) and the Marcus Center box office (414 273-7206).