Ventiskï Stories

 “Some Rooms Make You Whisper”: The Art of Isolation and the Racial Politics of Quiet in a Concert Hall Built for Jazz Tom Wetmore / Columbia University Abstract. This article ethnographically analyzes the unique acoustic properties of Rose Theater, a lavish 1,300-seat concert hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. Focusing on the hall’s remarkable quietness and acoustic isolation, I show how the sonic environment furthers Jazz at Lincoln Center’s aesthetic and ideological projects. By dramatically cutting off the sounds of jazz from the exterior world, thus excluding unwanted “noise,” Rose Theater’s acoustic design sonically refutes longstanding racist ideologies associating jazz with a noisy material essence. This analysis prompts new ways of interrogating how sound, space, and the built environment are entangled with difference and power. Keywords: sound studies, race, acoustics, jazz, space and place This article is about a very quiet room. A room where music is taken...