The Small but Mighty Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall

By Bekah Sandy

When the Seattle Symphony announced plans to build its new concert hall in Downtown Seattle a mere block away from The Lusty Lady, the peep show establishment offered a sardonic reaction on its marquee: “There goes the neighborhood.”  

But the message summarized the future, as Benaroya Hall’s construction launched the transformation of an area local newspapers deemed “seedy” into an arts destination that now draws hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. “The choice by the City and the Symphony to put this project in this location was a big values statement regarding the importance of culture and community,” said Mark Reddington. As lead architect, he was tasked with aligning that civic vision and the hall’s design. “This whole idea of putting [a prominent performance space] right in the densest urban part of the city is fairly unusual. We wanted people to feel like it was woven into the daily life of the city’s heart … to feel like their lives are enriched by the music and cultural activity at Benaroya Hall.” 

This commitment to community involvement and engagement led the original design team to create two unique performance spaces within Benaroya Hall.  

While the full orchestra plays in the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium, the facility’s smaller Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall is the perfect size for the Symphony’s chamber performances and interactive programs like the popular Tiny Tots Series, as well as being the home stage of other area arts organizations with no dedicated venue of their own.  

“The existence of [the Recital Hall] has been crucial for us, from the start,” said Dr. Michael Brockman, co-founder of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra. “And I’ll go further. Everyone who put in that tremendous effort to create that hall did the entire music community of Seattle a huge service by creating such a beautiful place for all of us to play music. I don’t think it’s too strong of a statement to say that we launched our success from the Recital Hall.”  

Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra is just one of 10 organizations (including Seattle Chamber Music Society, Seattle Classic Guitar Society and Music of Remembrance) that call the Recital Hall home.  

“[The Recital Hall] was included in [Benaroya Hall] for exactly that reason,” Reddington said. “There were a lot of other really meaningful and important music organizations in the community that needed to be supported in this project. [The Recital Hall is] where lots of different groups can feel like this is, if not their own home, then at least a place where they can invite their communities to be a part of what they do.”  

Part of the smaller hall’s charm is its size, with 536 seats compared to the 2,500 of Taper Auditorium. This coziness also appealed to outside organizations considering whether the space could be their own. “When I was in the early planning stages … I was very clear that I wanted to have our main series in the Recital Hall,” said Byron Schenkman, founder and artistic director of Sound Salon. “I love performing in the Recital Hall because of the intimacy of the space, something which is of key importance for Sound Salon. The audience feels really close to us on the stage … I was drawn to the comfort of the space for both performers and audience.”  

In addition to welcoming established music organizations, the Recital Hall presents diverse programming through the Community Stages Fund (CSF). This Seattle Symphony initiative invites Puget Sound nonprofit organizations, groups and artists with historically underrepresented perspectives to stage their works via fully sponsored or highly subsidized use of Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center, the Samuel & Althea Stroum Grand Lobby or the Recital Hall along with in-house digital streaming equipment and production crew. 

A handful of local nonprofits benefit annually from the fund. Among them is Key to Change, a music organization working to remove barriers and provide the benefits of a classical musical education to underserved students and students of color in South King County. The Recital Hall plays a vital role in helping Key to Change pursue its mission, said the organization’s Development Officer, Robert Simonds. “It’s a beautiful expression of the Symphony’s outward commitment to its community.” He added that there’s “no better partner” than Benaroya Hall and its staff. “Throughout the concert season, many different kinds of programming happen that no single institution could produce independently. The Recital Hall becomes a vehicle for community expression, and that is priceless.”  

The combination of CSF partner performances, select Seattle Symphony shows, area art organization’s concerts and rental client events (which include lectures, corporate meetings, film screenings, conventions and more) draws some 23,000 attendees annually to the more than 50 events held in the Recital Hall. 

In the years since its prediction of the neighborhood’s drastic evolution, The Lusty Lady has shuttered and the surrounding streets now welcome patrons bustling in and out of the spate of galleries, museums and shops that sprang up in Benaroya Hall’s wake. And the hall itself has emerged as one of the most visited performing arts venues in Seattle, with around 500,000 visitors attending some 450-plus events annually.  

Reddington intended for the building to be culturally significant. In fact, his commitment to its success led him to join the Benaroya Hall Board of Directors in 2004 and he maintains an active role at present. But there’s something special in seeing such an achievement persist 25 years later. “Whenever I mention Benaroya Hall, it’s always a place that is well known,” he said. “Everybody has been there for one reason or another. That, in itself, is something that is really satisfying. This is a place that we made for the community, that has served so many people in so many different ways. People still view it as a cultural anchor.” 

Read more about the history of Benaroya Hall here and a story detailing the construction of the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium here.

The public spaces within the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall have been generously underwritten as the Grousemont Foundation Recital Hall Stage, the Bill & Melinda Gates Recital Hall Lobby, and the Ilene & Woody Hertzog Recital Hall Bar.  

The Seattle Symphony’s Community Stages Fund is generously supported by the Tagney Jones Family Fund at Seattle Foundation.