Welcome/How-to

Location – Patron Services Desk

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Welcome to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s self-guided tour of Roy Thomson Hall.

There are 8 stops on this tour, and they are scattered around Roy Thomson Hall. At each station, you will find a corresponding QR code that you can scan to hear the next part of the tour. 

We hope you enjoy learning about the history and design of one of Toronto’s most iconic performance spaces. Of course, to get the full experience and hear Roy Thomson Hall the way it was meant to be heard, we encourage you to join us for a Toronto Symphony Orchestra performance. After you complete this tour, please visit our Patron Services table, where you can learn more about future TSO performances.

Land Acknowledgement

Location – Wampum Belt Plaque

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Please join us in acknowledging that the land we are gathered on is the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit River, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.

We further acknowledge that this city, Toronto, is within the territory governed by the Dish With One Spoon treaty between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas, and Haudenosaunee, which bound them to share the territory and protect the land, and that subsequent Indigenous Nations and Peoples, Europeans, and all newcomers have been invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship, and respect.

As we celebrate over 100 years of community-building and sharing the healing power of art, we are grateful to live and make music on this land.

The Link Between TSO & RTH

Location – Donor Wall

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Let’s dispel one of the biggest misconceptions about us! The building you are standing in is called Roy Thomson Hall, and it’s where the Toronto Symphony Orchestra performs, but it does not belong to the TSO.

The building is actually owned and operated by The Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall, which is a non-profit organization that both rents out their spaces and also presents their own shows.

So, why do people mistakenly believe that the TSO and Roy Thomson Hall are the same organization? Well, it could be because our history together goes way back!

The TSO made its premiere at the historic Massey Hall, over 100 years ago, and we performed there for decades. But, over time, the orchestra and the audience changed. Accommodating people of all abilities became increasingly important, and there was a need for elevators, ramps, and accessible seating.

The solution? The construction of an entirely new concert hall, one that would become an iconic landmark of Toronto… the Roy Thomson Hall.

The Construction of RTH

Location – TBD

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By the late 1970s, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra had been successfully performing at Massey Hall for decades, but the needs of the orchestra and our audience members were changing. Massey Hall, originally built in 1894, was beginning to show its age. The construction of “The New Massey Hall” would take place from 1979 to 1982.

Built on 2 ½ acres of land, the New Massey Hall cost $45 million dollars. This was a large sum of money at the time, and private donors helped to fundraise some of it. The biggest contributor was The Thomson Family, who gave $4.5 million in honor of Roy Thomson, a newspaper proprietor and media mogul who died shortly before the Hall was built. As a result of their generous donation, the New Massey Hall got its official name: the Roy Thomson Hall.  

As for the design, Arthur Erickson, one of Canada’s foremost international architects, was hired to build the hall. Erickson consulted with many different specialists while in the planning stages. For example, an orthopedic specialist advised on the design of the auditorium chairs. Even the musicians were involved! Itzhak Perlman, the world famous violinist who has performed in 75 concerts with the TSO, was consulted about accessibility, and ultimately this helped Roy Thomson Hall become ahead of its time. Today, it is one of the few concert halls in the world that have no steps anywhere in the backstage area.

Arthur Erickson’s Vision

Location – Grand Staircase

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When Arthur Erickson designed the architecture of Roy Thomson Hall, his goal was to create a theatre space that did not feel like a traditional theatre space.

You’ll remember that as you came in, instead of opening into a general rectangular space, you were guided to either the left or the right. Roy Thomson Hall is laid out in a circular shape, interspersed with gathering spaces to create a natural flow as people walk through the building. 

Another example of unconventional design is the grand staircase. In a traditional theatre, you would see a staircase like this at the front door. Instead, Erickson put the grand staircase at the back of the building, as far away from the entrance as possible. He did this to challenge our expectations and to encourage people to walk through the space to get where they are going. 

Because the architecture forces you to walk around, you experience the building and the other audience members before getting to your seat. Erickson felt that when you come to the concert it’s not just about the music, it’s about the full experience – stopping and buying a drink, talking with friends, meeting new people. He wanted you to experience the building itself as an art form, something in addition to the art on the stage.

Erickson envisioned this building to be about the present and the future, and so he chose to use materials that pushed the boundaries of architecture at the time: glass, steel, and concrete–Erickson once said that concrete was the marble of our time. 

Whether you agree with Erickson’s artistic vision or not, one thing is certain: Roy Thomson Hall has since become one of the most famous buildings in Toronto.

Looking Out, Looking In

Location – Mezzanine C2

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Take a moment now to look around the lobby. 

Let’s start by looking outside. What do you notice when you look out?

No matter where you stand in the lobby, you will see a part of the surrounding neighbourhood. The architect Arthur Erickson encircled Roy Thomson Hall with glass walls for this exact reason. The window is meant to be a mural, but it’s a living mural, a landscape that changes over time. When Roy Thomson Hall was first built, that living mural would have included an urban view, a rural view, an industrial view, and a view of the lake. Today, what we can see and appreciate is the eclectic variety of Toronto’s architecture.

If you try looking at Roy Thomson Hall from the outside, a similar effect happens. The city of Toronto is reflected on the glass panels in unique ways, depending on where you are looking from. Overall, the effect of the large glass structure is that the hall is full of light during the day, and glows with light at night.

Now turn around and look at the mirrors. What do you notice?

Do you see how the mirrors “bring the outside in”? How the nearby buildings are reflected in the mirror, bringing them inside the hall? You can see just as much by looking inside the building as looking outside.

Your reflection is in the mirror too, and you become a part of the landscape in the same way that the exterior buildings in the city become part of the inside of Roy Thomson Hall.

The Audience Brings the Colour

Location – Mezzanine C4

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Let’s take another moment to think about the design of the building.

What words would you use to describe the colours around you? How do these colours make you feel? 

If you described the colour scheme as grey, neutral, or monochromatic, then you’re absolutely right. The architect Arthur Erickson deliberately avoided using colours. His intention was to create a serene, calm, and subdued environment, one that wouldn’t be the focus. 

Instead, he expected the audience to bring the colour into the building. He envisioned Roy Thomson Hall as a space where everyone would be dressed up and on display. By making the audience the focus, and not the venue, it becomes more of a communal experience.

This colour scheme is everywhere inside of the building, even backstage. For example, when you sit in the auditorium, you’ll notice your seat is beige… all the better to highlight the exciting colours you bring to the hall!

The Auditorium + The Organ

Location – Inside auditorium from balcony

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A circular room, or a rectangular room… If you had to guess which one had better acoustics, which shape would you choose?

If you answered a rectangular room, then you’re right! Some of the most famous concert halls in the world are rectangular. 

However, as you now know, Roy Thomson Hall was built to be an unconventional concert hall. Unfortunately, this also led to an unconventional sound. Both musicians and audience members complained about it for years! To fix the acoustics, a $20 million renovation was completed over six months in 2002. It essentially turned this circular room back into a rectangle.

All the wood surfaces that you see now were added since then.  Wood is one of the best surfaces for live orchestral music; it helps create resonance within the hall. Keep in mind, there was no wood in this building when it first opened – like the lobby, it was all concrete.

Originally there was a million cubic feet of space in the upper reaches of the auditorium. The renovations have reduced that volume by 14% by adding wooden bulkheads over the concrete. There are 23 bulkheads in total covered with maple veneer.

The maple veneer has been sandblasted so that it is not completely smooth. When the sound waves hit the wood, the rougher texture helps to blend the sound and also helps to sustain it. If the wood is smooth then the sound waves hit it differently and the sound dissipates more quickly.

Two acoustic canopies were also added. Those are the enormous circular shapes that you see hanging above the stage. The largest weighs 38 tonnes and contains all the sound and light equipment for the stage. The smaller canopy weighs a mere 10 ½ tonnes.  

The canopies are actually movable; they can be lowered all the way down to stage height so that technicians can replace or adjust the lighting and microphones on it. Depending on what the TSO is performing, the height of the canopies can be adjusted – for example, a quartet is not going to create as much volume as a hundred-piece orchestra, so we can shrink the room down so that the sound isn’t lost in the space.

The centerpiece of the auditorium is the pipe organ, built by Gabriel Kney, from London, Ontario. This organ is worth over $650,000. Building and installing this single instrument took over 20,000 hours, an amount of time so staggeringly enormous that you could listen to J.S. Bach’s entire music catalogue over one hundred times during that time! (Some people really love Bach!)

The organ has four manual pedals, a pedal keyboard, 71 stops, and 5,207 pipes. There are two consoles: the fixed gallery keyboard and a moveable electronic keyboard for use at stage level.

This was one of the last large-scale mechanical organs built in the world, meaning there is a physical connection between the keys and the pipes. When you press on the keys on the upper console you are actually opening and shutting the valves on the pipes. Most organs built after 1982 have electronic connections instead. The pipe organ essentially turns the whole auditorium into an instrument – the way the sound resonates in the space is an important characteristic of the organ itself. It’s rare to hear it played, so if there’s ever a TSO concert featuring the organ, you should come just for that! 

Sound Insulation

Location – Sound Lock Area

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As you make your way through Roy Thomson Hall, pay attention to the sounds around you. Listen carefully.

When you’re inside the lobby, you can probably hear the sounds of the city. This is because the glass walls of the lobby are not a good sound barrier. However, step inside the auditorium, and you hear virtually nothing from the outside world. How do you think this sound-proofing was achieved?

The remarkable answer is that Roy Thomson Hall is actually two different buildings–a building inside a building–and each has its own foundation. In the lobby, hidden behind the mirrors, there is an empty gap separating the two structures. This insulating double wall keeps the outside sound from reaching the auditorium.

There is only one place where the interior and exterior buildings connect, and that is inside the sound lock tunnels. The next time you pass through them, see if you notice how the sound levels rise or fall as you enter and exit!