For this month's Artist highlight for my Art Talk series I am highlighting Frank Lloyd Wright. This past weekend I went at sunrise (5:00am) to get pictures of Gammage at sunrise for the post.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium, 1964
Tempe, Arizona
I would like to now talk a bit about Gammage.
The building is named after President of ASU Grady Gammage. He was friends with Frank Lloyd Wright and asked him to design an auditorium. Neither Gammage or Wright would live to see the building's completion in 1964.
Very interesting, Wright had made this plan was for an opera house in Baghdad, Iraq.
According to ASU Gammage
Construction of the $2.46 million building took 25 months. ASU Gammage stands 80 feet high, eight stories by normal building standards, and measures 300 by 250 feet. Two pedestrian bridges add to the feeling of vastness, and extend 200 feet like welcoming arms. ASU Gammage was completed in September 1964. ASU Gammage is the only public building in Arizona designed by Wright.
A close up of one of the bridges "arms".
Here is the entrance for the shows. The theater has 3000 seats!
The stage can be adapted for grand opera, musical and dramatic productions or for symphony concerts, organ recitals, chamber music recitals, solo performances and lectures. The remarkable versatility of the stage is enhanced by a collapsible orchestra shell which, when fully extended, can accommodate a full orchestra, chorus and pipe organ. The shell is telescoped into a specially designed storage area when not in use. 1
While I am not a big show person Gammage has an impressive line up of performers. Here are a few that are coming next school year.
I saw Wicked at Gammage and it was incredible.
Here are some of the other well known celebrates, musicians and performers that have come to the theater
Mary J. Blige, Billy Crystal, Tony Bennett and Melissa Etheridge. Past artists include icons of dance, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Rudolph Nureyev, Bill T. Jones and the Bolshoi Ballet and pillars of classical music, Vladimir Horowitz, Phillip Glass, Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman. ASU Gammage also hosted the 2004 presidential debate, lectures, and symposiums featuring the world’s most prominent scientists, authors, dignitaries, politicians, and scholars, including Stephen Hawking, Elie Wiesel, Maya Angelou and Margaret Thatcher. ASU Gammage is also one of the major presenters of Touring Broadway and has presented significant productions including THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, WICKED, THE LION KING, MISS SAIGON, LES MISERABLES and many more.
I work at Arizona State University as an academic advisor. I have spent numerous occasion in the theater for Fall welcomes (a big welcome and pep rally for the incoming freshman at the start of the school year) and many graduations.
This is the view that I see most coming from my office to work at the events.
On campus is is lovingly refer to as the birthday cake building.
Other views of the building as I walked around it.
I especially like this one with the prickly pear in front of it.
I have really enjoyed connecting and learning more about this building that I have seen and been to many times.
Sources: 1- ASU Gammage History
