Philharmonic Prices Jump

Top subscription prices will jump nearly 50% and bottom prices will more than double when the Los Angeles Philharmonic moves into the Walt Disney Concert Hall next year.

The price boost, disclosed by Philharmonic management in a Friday letter to subscribers, pushes the priciest seats from $82 to $120 each.

That makes the Philharmonic pricier than the Ahmanson’s current ABBA-inspired musical, “Mamma Mia!” ($25-$80), but still cheaper than a Lakers game ($23-$175, excluding premier and suite seating) and in the same ballpark as Los Angeles Opera ($30-$170).

The most affordable subscription tickets for Disney Hall seats (those on the highest level and those behind the orchestra on lower levels) will run $35, up from $14 for rear balcony seats now. Single tickets for performances at Disney Hall won’t be available for several months but have typically carried the same price as subscription seats.

Philharmonic officials note that some subscribers in the middle ranges may find the new venue more affordable: For instance, somebody moving from a loge seat in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to a Terrace East seat (on the third of the four audience levels) in the new hall would find the cost dipping from $43 to $35.

Officials also note that student and senior rush tickets--unsold seats that are released two hours before curtain--will remain at $10.

Also, the subscription prices do not apply to the more than 50 non-subscription performances the Philharmonic expects to stage in Disney Hall’s first year.

But for the core of the orchestra’s presentations, the overall price trend is upward. For subscription series, Disney Hall will feature 392 seats at $120 each, 757 seats at $88, 572 seats at $68 and 544 seats at $35. This season’s lineup at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion includes about 470 Founders Circle seats at $82 each, about 400 rear balcony seats at $14 and about 2,200 seats priced in between, $33 to $65.

The orchestra, which kicks off its 2002-03 season Oct. 3, doesn’t move to Disney Hall until the 2003-04 season, and the steel-skinned, wavy-walled structure, designed by Frank Gehry, is still under construction on Grand Avenue. But because of the dramatic differences in seating in Disney Hall compared with the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the Music Center, prices and seating charts have inspired a buzz of speculation among subscribers.

Philharmonic officials have encouraged that buzz, warning audiences that subscribers to the 2002-03 season will have a substantial advantage over others when it comes time to seek subscriptions at the striking new venue. Early results suggest the strategy has been effective: Philharmonic marketing officials say they’ve sold about 23% more subscriptions for this season than last season, about 27,000 in all. Subscription packages vary from three to eight performances.

Because the 2003-04 season in Disney Hall will feature 100 subscription series performances, up from 89 in the 2002-03 season, Philharmonic officials say they don’t expect ticket availability to be a problem.

Virtually all of the new venue’s 2,265 seats are closer to the orchestra than the 3,086 seats in the Chandler Pavilion, orchestra officials say, but some seats in the new venue are behind the musicians (and have $35 price tags). There is no formally designated seating area to match the current elite Founders Circle, but prices alone are likely to focus subscribers on the $120 seats in front of the orchestra in the two lowest levels of auditorium seating.

Larry Rappaport, owner of the Opera Shop on Beverly Boulevard and a regular at Philharmonic performances, was shocked by the increase. “Oh no,” he said, but he added that the change wouldn’t affect his listening habits.

“The hall is just going to be a hot item, like the Music Center was at the beginning” in the 1960s, he said. “This too will fade.”

The price hike, marketing director Joan Cumming said, can be traced to studies done by the staff when Deborah Borda arrived as executive director of the orchestra in January 2000.

“We discovered we were significantly underpriced compared to other orchestras across the country. We looked at Chicago, we looked at Boston and New York,” Cumming said. “So in the last couple of years we’ve been trying to get ourselves back to comparable prices.” Between the 2001-02 season and the 2002-03 season, Cumming noted, the Philharmonic’s prices rose 7%. (When the Philadelphia Orchestra moved to a new hall last December, officials there bumped prices from $94 to $110 and nevertheless saw the season’s paid attendance rise 7%.)

Added Cumming: “I have to say honestly that after doing the research, I really don’t feel that we are charging significantly different prices than anybody else is.”

The new hall carries a projected cost of $274 million. In their last public word on fund-raising, Music Center officials said they had about $20 million more to raise.

Philharmonic spokeswoman Elizabeth Hinckley said workers have been putting in the hall’s gardens in recent days and taking down scaffolding inside the concert hall, although much scaffolding remains up in the lobby and other areas. The job of cladding the building in steel, Hinckley said, should be done by December.

Meanwhile, parking prices in the Music Center garage are rising right away. Those fees, set by Los Angeles County officials, are increasing by $1, which puts rates at $8 for regular parking and $19 for valet parking.

Philharmonic officials said subscribers who purchased parking passes before the county bumped the cost will be able to park at the lower rate. Parking prices for Disney Hall--which will also be set by county officials--have not yet been announced.

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The Cost of Music

The seats at Walt Disney Concert Hall rise over four seating levels and a variety of section designations from front orchestra at stage level, next to the orchestra, to a three-level balcony in the back.

Stage level $120

Garden level $35-$120

Terrace level $35-$88

Balcony $35