Thanks Roger! Very interesting. Around the time Marcel Dupre innaugurated the pipe organ, he 
recorded Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony with Paray/Detroit. he and Paray were friends since boyhood.

What's evident in the history is how generous the Ford family was to the Detroit Symphony, and how 
delicate a situation it was to move recording venues when that very expensive auditorium was so new.

Paray handled the politics very well, because the recordings at Cass all got very good reviews and 
there was still good blood between the DSO and Mercury in the 90's when my mother needed some 
historical data, scores and photos from the orchestra librarian.

In reading this history, I bet the opportune time to shift recordings was during the first 
"adjustment of acoustics" that took place in 1959. But Mercury session books indicate some sessions 
took place at the Paradise Theatre before then.

I can't over-emphasize how much the Mercury crew liked Cass. The word I always got when people were 
remembering back was that Cass was equal to the Eastman Theater in Rochester -- a place where they 
could walk in and listen for a few minutes and know exactly where to put the mics, and be assured of 
a good recording. Watford, near London, was like that, but with the orchestra out on the floor so 
there was uniform reverberation all around it. In Rochester and Cass, they could set the orchestra 
up almost like in performance and then rope up the mics and go.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger Kulp" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 7:12 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Old Mercury recording venue gets a rebuild


>I never knew the complete history of the Henry & Edsel Ford Memorial Auditorium.In case anybody 
>else did not either,it's all here.
> http://historicdetroit.org/building/ford-auditorium/
>
>> Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 18:32:58 -0400
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Old Mercury recording venue gets a rebuild
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Hi, Tom,
>>
>> I think there is double good news in this:
>>
>> (1) Science has moved really far from the original Avery Fisher days. It
>> sounds as if ARUP can do real-time acoustic modelling and allow the
>> design and client teams to hear the tradeoffs of design decisions. This
>> is a few steps beyond SIASOFT, which was a real breakthrough 20 years
>> ago (or so).
>>
>> (2) ARUP has had an acoustics team for at least 20 years -- I worked
>> with them on some projects during my last decade at NTC in Glendale, CA.
>> They were very good, as I recall. It seems they are doing more of this
>> type of work worldwide and it would be interesting to look at some of
>> their recent projects and the reviews thereof.
>>
>>
>> On 2014-03-18 3:11 PM, Tom Fine wrote:
>> > Hopefully this won't be like the many mistaken iterations of Avery
>> > Fisher Hall
>> >
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Long" <[log in to unmask]>
>> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> > Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 2:34 PM
>> >
>> >> If think the acoustics might just end up being on the good side of "state
>> >> of the art."  See www.arup.com/Projects/Northrop_Auditorium.aspx.
>> >>
>> >> Jim Long
>> >> Baroda, MI
>> -- Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
>> Aurora, Ontario, Canada                             647 479 2800
>> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm Quality tape transfers -- 
>> even from hard-to-play tapes.
>
>
>