The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center is a concert hall located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, US.
- Venue
- Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center
- Town
- Dallas, US
- Capacity
- 2,062
The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center is a concert hall located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, US. Ranked one of the world's greatest orchestra halls, it was designed by architect I. M. Pei and acoustician Russell Johnson's Artec Consultants. The structural engineers for this project was Leslie E. Robertson Associates, and it opened in September 1989. The center is named for Morton Meyerson, former president of Electronic Data Systems and former chairman and CEO of Perot Systems, who led the 10-year effort by the Dallas Symphony Association to create a home for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. The new concert center was named in his honor in 1986 at the request of Ross Perot, who made a $10 million contribution to the building fund for the naming rights. It is the permanent home of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Dallas Symphony Chorus, as well as the primary performing venue of the Dallas Wind Symphony and several other Dallas-based musical organizations. The Meyerson Symphony Center is owned by the City of Dallas and operated by the Dallas Symphony Association. There are four private suites, for small concerts, meetings and events designed by Booziotis & Company Architects of Dallas. The exterior of the large pavilion and lobby is circular and constructed of glass and metal supports to contrast with the solid geometric lines of the actual hall. Architect I. M. Pei, and structural engineer Leslie E. Robertson Associates has described the structure of the hall's interior as "very conservative". "It is conservative for reasons I no longer accept", he said in 2000. "I feel that the hall doesn't fully represent what I would have liked to do. It was my first one." Because the music performed in the hall was likely to be from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Pei was unwilling to impose modern styles of architecture on the interior. The trustees and acoustic team had decided on the shoebox style before Pei was hired, and he sought to sculpt t