The new performing arts center, also known as The Conrad, caps an ambitious and unprecedented effort to build a permanent home for the La Jolla Music Society and, in the process, reinvent the 51-year-old arts organization
By GEORGE VARGAWRITER
When opportunity came knocking for the La Jolla Music Society to launch the most ambitious and expensive undertaking in the organization’s history, it came in the form of a wrecking ball.
In 2012, the society learned that Sherwood Auditorium in La Jolla would be torn down and rebuilt as a large exhibition gallery by its owner, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
Corrections:
3/31/19, 10:25 AM The original version of this story stated that the La Jolla Music Society’s annual budget is $4 million. It is $6.5 million. That figure has been updated in the story.
The society had rented the 492-seat auditorium every August since 1986 for its acclaimed SummerFest chamber-music extravaganza. It had also used the auditorium for fall, winter and spring concerts. Sherwood’s closure could have been a crippling, if not fatal, blow.
“It was a huge shock,” recalled Christopher Beach, the society’s president and CEO from 2005 until 2016. “We had no home, no place to call our own.”
Inside the Baker-Baum Concert Hall at the still under construction Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center on Fay Avenue in La Jolla.(Howard Lipin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Now, they do.
Barely two years after the society’s final 2017 concert presentation at the Sherwood, the 51-year-old organization is poised to celebrate the culmination of its unprecedented expansion and reinvention. With the Friday opening of its new La Jolla home — the $82 million Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center — the nonprofit organization will officially begin the most audacious and, perhaps, risky chapter in its history.
“We built The Conrad on a hope and a dream,” said Katherine Chapin, the board president of the society, which has an annual operating budget of $6.5 million.
“We now have a performing arts center that will enable us to expand the audiences we draw and market to,” Chapin continued. “We can extend our legacy of ‘bringing the world to San Diego’ and of maintaining our status as a world-class organization, with our new world-class venue.”
And the risky part?“
The risk is that we, as a board, created this performing arts center out of a vision we had, and it was purely a vision,” Chapin replied.
“It was not something we had the experience to do, or — initially — the funds. But we raised the money, found a world-class architect and world-class acoustician, and built it, nail by nail. … Now, as a presenting organization, we’ll be utilizing The Conrad about one-third of the year. The rest of the time, we’ll need to find renters and ensure that, financially, we are a profitable business entity, 365 days a year.”
‘A testament to the board and staff’
Despite its $82 million price tag, the Conrad will open Friday with all but $700,000 of that amount already raised. No less remarkable, that underwriting was raised privately, with no city or state funding, and no partnership with any other arts organizations to help offset costs.
Just as impressive, fundraising and the construction of The Conrad was unimpeded by the society’s having gone through two CEOs in just 14 months. Its new CEO, Ted DeDee, will start work Friday. Interim CEO David Kitto, who was brought in last year, has been singled out for praise by several of the society’s board members for his steadying hand during what might otherwise have been a tumultuous period.
“That is impressive. It’s a testament to the board and staff that they were able to keep things on track,” said Andrew Frank, the editor of New York-based Chamber Music Magazine.
The 49,200-square-foot center is designed by New England-based Epstein Joslin Architects Inc. Yasuhisa Toyota, the president of Nagata Acoustics America, is the head acoustician.

Grillage, inspired by the Botanical Building at Balboa Park is above the outdoor balcony of the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center on Fay Avenue in La Jolla.(Howard Lipin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Between them, the two companies’ credits range from Disney Hall in Los Angeles and the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood to the Baltimore Symphony’s Strathmore Music Center and the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. Their state-of-the-art work on The Conrad required close collaboration.
The Conrad houses two performance venues. The Baker-Baum Concert Hall has a capacity of 513, while The JAI can accommodate — depending on the event — 116 people seated at tables, 170 in rows of chairs, or 300 standing.
The two venues are named, respectively, after four major donors — retired Sempra CEO Stephen Baum and his wife, Brenda Baker, and retired Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs and his wife, Joan.
Conrad Prebys, for whom the center is named, died in 2016. One of San Diego’s most generous philanthropists, his donations to area organizations between 2004 and 2015 totaled more than $300 million.
An avocational pianist and lifelong fan of classical music, Prebys helped personally select the site for the society’s new performing arts center. He also pledged $5 million for construction and $10 million for the center’s endowment fund for operating expenses (the donation of the latter amount has been stalled by ongoing Prebys estate litigation.)
The heart of La Jolla Village
The Conrad is in the heart of La Jolla Village, on the site of a former retail complex that was home to Tapenade restaurant. It is just a few blocks from the now-defunct Sherwood Auditorium and across the street from The Lot movie theater.
“Unfortunately, Conrad passed away before the groundbreaking, but he was so excited about it,” said Debra Turner, Prebys’ longtime partner and a current society board member. “He said: ‘I have done so much for so many, but this (center) is for me. Music is in my soul — this is my legacy.’ ”
Injecting soul and personality into a new performing arts center is a challenge for the most gifted architects. So is combining visually pleasing aesthetics and pristine sound quality.
Before submitting his company’s winning proposal, Alan Joslin — the principal architect in charge of The Conrad’s design — spent time with his team examining nearby buildings in La Jolla and in Balboa Park. These included the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, several churches, and such Irving Gill-designed landmarks as the La Jolla Women’s Club and Scripps Hall at The Bishop’s School.
“It was those qualities we wanted to latch on to — and recall and harmonize with — without aping and copying them,” Joslin said. “I think of what we have done at The Conrad as a bit like Shakespeare, which is trying to gain a lot of strong character and meaning with minimal means.”
(Michelle Guerrero / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Joslin describes the Baker-Baum Concert Hall as “a wooden nest that floats inside of the concrete and masonry of the hall.”
By suspending the hall, so to speak, the sound and vibrations of its heating and cooling systems are virtually eliminated for concertgoers and performers alike.
“Yasuhisa Toyota, whose work is extraordinary, put a lot of emphasis on the quality of the stage floor,” Joslin noted. “It was built almost like a Japanese temple, with lots of beams and a 2-foot-thick air space. We used Alaskan yellow cedar. The stage allows the musicians to subtly vibrate with the music, as they feel it through the floor.”
Toyota uses proprietary software that he developed for his sound designs in concert halls. He seeks to ensure that the music sounds as natural, warm, rich and well-balanced as possible.
“We are hearing the acoustics not only with our ears, but with our eyes,” said Toyota, who is sometimes prone to enigmatic remarks. “The question is: How clear can we hear the music?’ ”
Very clearly, according to members of the Hausmann Quartet, the San Diego chamber music group that was among the select few artists who performed at a private sound test for Toyota at The Conrad on March 4. As part of his sound testing, Toyota popped the air out of a number of inflated paper bags from different parts of the concert hall. His main focus, however, was how the music sounded.
“That was a real treat — it was cool to play for Toyota, who is a concert hall legend,” said Hausmann Quartet cellist Alex Greenbaum.
“We played the first notes that were played in the Baker-Baum Concert Hall. It sounds beautiful, it looks beautiful, it’s a really remarkable sounding hall. Our violinist, Isaac (Allen), asked Toyota to explain exactly what is his process for ‘tuning a hall,’ because we were all curious. But Toyota was cryptic and vague, in a very charming way. He said to us: ‘No, no — you are the ones doing the tuning of the hall’.”
Multiple venues, multiple uses
The Baker-Baum Concert Hall and The JAI face each other. In between them is the center’s Wu Tsai Courtyard & Garden.
The courtyard, which will also host events, contains a permanent bar and food concession area that will be open to the public during the day. The second-story Belanich Terrace overlooks the courtyard and surrounding neighborhood. The terrace features terra cotta grillage that was inspired in part by the Botanical Building in Balboa Park.
The rear of the multilevel center contains a private lounge for donors, rehearsal spaces, a kitchen and catering area, restrooms, storage areas and more. Staff offices are on the second floor, above the Atkinson Room (which will be rented for meetings and lectures). Each area has been designed with careful attention to detail.
“Architecture is very competitive and I think there were four or five firms the La Jolla Music Society interviewed after they looked at about, I’m guessing, 15 to 20 submissions to design The Conrad,” said Joslin, the principal architect.
“Instead of showing them one building that could fit on that site, we gave them six different vignettes of how we might approach developing the building. We called them ‘variations’ and associated each design with a piece of music, which ranged from ‘Carmen’ to a very contemporary, somewhat freewheeling piece. Basically, we gave them a video movie, which included the music and our ideas. Our notion was that we were really here to listen to them and that it would be inappropriate for us to place a (single) static design in front of them, without their input.”

(Michelle Guerrero / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
While classical music will be a featured entree, the society’s offerings at its new center will champion the stylistic diversity that has been a hallmark of its year-round programming. At least 17 jazz, dance, world music, cabaret and film events are on its schedule between April 9 and June 8. Six other ticketed performances will be presented by outside arts organizations, who are renting The Conrad during that same period.
That diversity will be further showcased during The Conrad’s opening weekend.
It begins Friday with an all-star gala concert by nearly a dozen artists. They include classical violin star Hilary Hahn; ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro; “jookin” dancer Lil Buck; pianist (and new SummerFest music director) Inon Barnatan; and a chamber-music quartet featuring four former SummerFest music directors, including violinist Cho-Liang “Jimmy” Lin.
Versatile pop singer Seal, a four-time Grammy Award winner, performs Saturday. He’ll be followed by a Sunday dance concert by neo-swing band The Hot Sardines. The shows by Seal and the Sardines are sold out. Only a few dozen tickets, priced at $1,500 each, are left for Friday’s opening concert. A free open house will be held on April 27, with performances by jazz trumpeter Curtis Taylor, Drummers Without Borders and several area dance and classical music ensembles.
“It’s quite unusual for a performing arts center like this to open. But La Jolla Music Society has made a lot of very smart decisions over the years — and part of that was broadening its performance menu,” said Chamber Music Magazine editor Frank.
“Having brought in jazz, world music and dance, that kind of openness often distinguishes an organization that can grow, and it’s not particularly common. The magnitude of The Conrad is clearly very significant and beyond what many people working in this field could imagine in 2019. … The fact it’s coming from an organization with such an established brand and long history of development definitely inspires hope.”
The cost of such ambition and development isn’t cheap.
The Conrad’s price tag is now $82 million. That is $3.5 million more than the $78.5 million budget in place last July, $17 million more than the $65 million amount cited in 2015, and a whopping $42 million more than the $40 million budget announced in 2014.
Of course, cost overruns are hardly the exception when it comes to designing and constructing top-quality performing arts centers.
Chicago’s Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music & Dance opened in 2003 at a cost of $52.7 million, nearly $14 million more than originally planned. The Shed, the enormous new multidisciplinary arts center that opens Friday in New York City, was budgeted at $350 million. By mid-March, that amount had mushroomed to $475 million.
Overview outside the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center on Fay Avenue in La Jolla.(Howard Lipin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
In the case of The Conrad, the cost grew exponentially as the vision of exactly what the center would be grew. Its design had to factor in the 30-foot height restriction imposed on all new buildings in La Jolla Village. Construction material costs also rose, and crews have been working double-shifts since at least early March.
One unforeseen factor — which added $1 million to the budget — is that the property The Conrad occupies is at a low point where rainwater accumulates from both directions. This necessitated constructing a giant “bathtub” under the main floor seating area of the Baker-Baum Concert Hall to prevent flooding — although, in this case, the “bathtub” is designed to remain dry and keep water out, rather than to be a receptacle for it.
“There’s a huge drain line that runs diagonally through The Conrad site,” Joslin said. “So we had to negotiate with the city of La Jolla to build over it.”
The lot The Conrad occupies was purchased for $10 million. An additional $2.5 million was spent to buy property under the nearby Bank of America to secure underground parking.
“We started off thinking we would build a bare-bones concert hall,” said society board member and former Sempra honcho Baum, who has helped oversee construction.
“What we’ve ended up with is a great concert hall, plus a beautiful cabaret, offices and much more. We’re only 7 percent above the maximum guaranteed price, which for a project of this size and complexity is something to be proud of.
“I went into the concert hall earlier this month, when the acousticians were there to do a sound test with musicians performing. It sounded so wonderful that I cried. It’s a beautiful building with a beautiful sound. But, like a lot of things, you don’t want to know how the sausage is made.”
Would The Conrad exist if Sherwood Auditorium hadn’t been demolished?
“It probably wouldn’t have happened, because sometimes it takes a lot to make people move,” society board member Turner said. “When the choice is either fold the organization or build a performing arts center, that’s a big step. Would it have been nicer to have The Conrad 20 years ago? Yes. But once we decided to move forward, the building (process) began almost instantly.”
Former society CEO Beach, the chief fundraiser for The Conrad, agreed.
“Twenty-five years ago, long before I got here in 2005, the society’s board had evaluated the idea of building a theater for us and the community,” Beach said. “It didn’t work, because there wasn’t the absolute necessity. And, now, there was.
“But at Friday’s opening night of The Conrad, we’ll be able to look back — in hindsight — and say: ‘This was the greatest thing to happen to La Jolla Music Society in a very long time’ — and, also, to La Jolla, the broader music community and San Diego. When someone wants to find us now, they’ll know where we are.”
La Jolla Music Society Grand Opening Concert
When: 5:30 p.m. Friday
Featuring: Hilary Hahn, violin; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano; Jake Shimabukuro, ukulele; Lil Buck, dancer; the Miró Quartet; Inon Barnatan, piano; Heiichiro Ohyama, viola; Cho-Liang Lin, violin; David Finckel, cello; Wu Han, piano.
Where: The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center’s Baker-Baum Concert Hall, 7600 Fay Ave., La Jolla
Tickets: A limited number of $1,500 tickets are available and include complimentary valet service, welcoming reception and post-concert reception.
Phone: (858) 459-3728