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After
the Deluge
The flood-soaked
Houston Symphony
dries out and tunes up
by Susan M. Barbieri
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The show did go on at Jones Hall, home of the Houston Symphony Orchestra,
this September—but "Water Music" was most definitely not on the program.
Hammered last June by tropical storm Allison, which flooded much of
downtown Houston, Jones Hall stood for days with some 40 feet of fetid
bayou water in its lower reaches. The deluge reduced three grand pianos
and two double basses to "matchsticks" and left sheaves of valuable
archives—including historic scores—a soggy mess. All told, the damage
came to about $10 million.
"We make flood jokes around here: 'I'm up to my eyeballs,' and so
on. The jokes are a little grim," says Ann Kennedy, the orchestra's
executive director and chief executive officer, "but we're going to
be fine. We have a lot of work to do, and it's definitely a catastrophe,
but we're going to be fine."
Getting everything cleaned up and ready for the orchestra's season
was "an extraordinary undertaking," she says. Nevertheless, the fall's
first event—"Fiesta Sinfonica," a 15-year-old annual free concert
of Latin and Hispanic music conducted by Carlos Miguel Prieto of the
Mexico City Philharmonic—packed the house, as usual.
It was a festive kickoff for the new season, after a summer one orchestra
official called "pure hell."
Jones Hall has two levels below the street. The orchestra's administrative
offices and music library reside on the first floor below street level,
the rehearsal hall and piano room on the second level down—or they
did before June. The flood filled both levels floor to ceiling. Once
the water stopped pouring in and pumps suctioned out what remained,
workers using sledgehammers and chainsaws demolished the waterlogged
pianos, loaded the scraps into plastic bags, then hauled them up several
flights of stairs.
Half the library was "schlepped out" within a week of the storm,
Kennedy says, the other half by the end of the second week. Tens of
thousands of sheets of music—some dating back to the orchestra's founding
in 1913—now sit packed in 1,300 boxes in giant freezers. Among the
invaluable pieces are scores with notes scribbled by Leopold Stokowski,
John Barbaroli, and Sir Thomas Beecham, among others.
"They were decontaminated and flash-frozen, kind of like fish sticks,"
she adds. "So now we have all these boxes of frozen papers. It's not
only music, but also all of our historical archives and our office
papers. All of that is waiting for time in the vacuum chamber," she
says. The orchestra is queued up behind the local medical center and
other downtown businesses whose files were under water.
"When the paper comes back, it won't be in the same condition it
was," Kennedy says. "The scores will be stiff. It's not like a musician
could flip the pages quickly while he or she is playing. They'll be
slightly faded, but hopefully resilient enough that we can turn the
pages and unfaded enough that we can still copy them."
Amazingly, the performance area—other than the orchestra pit, which
took on a bit of water—came through mostly unscathed. Orchestra officials
rave about city workers who ignored bureaucracy and within 36 hours
had parked dehumidifying trucks at the hall and shoved huge tubes
through the doors to suck out moisture. Simultaneously, air conditioning
trucks pumped dry air in the other side. All told, the city appropriated
$8.3 million to get the hall—the upstairs performing area, not the
underground offices—back in operation.
"You can imagine what would have happened to the teak on the walls
with the water lapping a few inches just below the floor level," Kennedy
says. "In the big picture, we're extraordinarily lucky. At street
level, the stage and the beautiful, cushy red velvet reclining chairs
and the lobby weren't hurt. But all the electrical outlets and the
air conditioning and the lighting and the machinery that raises and
lowers the stage—that kind of stuff was blown out."
And some fine instruments were ruined. Bassist David Malone lost
a beautiful Testore double bass made in 1692 and appraised at $100,000.
Robert "Red" Pastorek's 1800 Justin Maucote, valued at $30,000, was
also "totaled."
"It was the safest place in town," Pastorek says. "In the 35 years
we've been in that hall, there's never been a problem. When we leave
town for the summer, I take my bass and leave it down there because
I don't want to leave it in my house in case there's a hurricane.
So we get a flood."
By the time officials declared the building safe to enter, the glue
in Pastorek's bass had dissolved. Its belly, back, ribs, and neck
were warped and its varnish destroyed. Pieces were missing and broken.
"It was a mess," Pastorek says. "I could spend two years and $20,000
to put it back together again, and there'd be no guarantee it would
ever be anything." Pastorek says he's getting by just fine with another
instrument.
Indeed, "making do" seems the order of the day for the Houston Symphony
Orchestra six months after. The orchestra's offices are now eight
blocks away from Jones Hall, and the library, such as it is, is in
the librarian's home.
"There are huge logistical issues," Kennedy says. "We have no place
to put the pianos or the basses. But I can assure you that the basses
are not going back down underneath the hall, no matter what
anybody says about a once-in-a-lifetime flood."
