Moving

For 46 years, this soulful oddity has been San Francisco’s best-kept musical secret

Sound is the only color in the pitch-dark concert room of the auditorium. Since 1975 this theater on Bush Street in Polk Gulch has been quietly – and sometimes loudly – trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.

The modest performance space looks like a college lecture hall with a modern mid-century hobby room criss-crossed. Speakers are everywhere; The last official count was 176. Speakers of various shapes and sizes dangle from the ceiling like stalactites. They are also hidden under bars in the floor and hidden in the walls. Audium has been using the same chairs, zigzag metal frames with soft red cushions for 46 years. For COVID-19 purposes there are only 11 chairs far apart. I sit down, the lights go dark and then the show starts.

Jazz piano tunes and street shots of San Francisco bounce around the room like ping pong balls from speaker to speaker. The sound of a car engine rumbles under my feet, a recording of a conversation in Union Square whispers off the walls to my left, while xylophone tones swirl overhead. I close my eyes, but the room is so dark that at some point I’ll forget they’re even closed.

Jazz piano tunes and street shots of San Francisco bounce around the room like ping pong balls from speaker to speaker.

Mariah Tiffany / Special for SFGATE

“It’s like a movie for your ears,” says Dave Shaff, who manages the space and produces the latest composition, Audium Sound Hour, which premieres on May 6th.

The concept behind Audium was inspired by the experimental music scene in San Francisco in the 1960s. At the time, Shaff’s father Stan was a professional trumpeter. After performing at the Tape Music Center in San Francisco, he began to work with renowned composers such as John Cage and the dance choreographer Anna Halprin. His work with Halprin inspired him to think about moving the sound of his trumpet the way dancers move their bodies and treating music as if it were a spatial sculpture.

Together with co-founder Doug McEachern, Stan Shaff designed an immersive loudspeaker system with which he can move sounds around the room in real time. Instead of just a wall of stereo sound from left and right, the melodies were now like marionettes on strings that could be inserted into hundreds of places in a room. Shaff and McEachern began performing at the San Francisco Museum of Art (which later became the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) with this philosophy, and then used a National Endowment for the Arts scholarship to convert a former bakery into an audium. Dave’s father Stan is now 92 years old, but still had a prepandemic and is currently working on a new composition.

Since 1975, the Audium Theater, hidden on Bush Street in Polk Gulch, has been quietly - and sometimes loudly - trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.

Since 1975, the Audium Theater, hidden on Bush Street in Polk Gulch, has been quietly – and sometimes loudly – trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.

Mariah Tiffany / Special for SFGATE

Like most San Francisco venues, the Audium has been closed since the first on-site accommodation ordinance was issued in March 2020. Meanwhile, thanks to a small town grant, they’ve been able to upgrade their HVAC system and reopened for private parties on May 6th. Booking an experience for a group of four people costs $ 100, and each additional guest costs $ 25 (maximum 10 people).

Last year Dave Shaff developed an iPad-based digital control system to replace the old analog mixer. However, for now, Audium’s principles and technologies are largely the same as they were in the 1970s. And that is what makes it such a lovely experience.

Jazz piano tunes and street shots of San Francisco bounce around the room like ping pong balls from speaker to speaker.

Jazz piano tunes and street shots of San Francisco bounce around the room like ping pong balls from speaker to speaker.

Mariah Tiffany / Special for SFGATE

Fans of electronic and experimental music, or really anyone who has attended a music festival in the past decade, will be no stranger to installations like Audium. You enter a cave-like room, possibly Van Gogh paintings are projected on the walls. Or sit in the California Academy of Sciences planetarium and stare at a swirl of 3D robotic graphics specially mapped to the contours of the ceiling. A cacophony of synthesized sounds and trippy images. These experiences are always pretty cool, but sometimes just a little too on the nose.

I am sitting in my 46-year-old seat in total darkness and am surrounded by pounding bucket drummers. A skateboarder does a kickflip on my left and a BART train races by on my right. Bass vibrations float through the metal of the chair, giving me a light massage as birds, bells, and timpani drums drip from the stalactites. A free jazz musician finally gets his grand piano when a dissonant piano chord glues all the sounds together.

Since 1975, the Audium Theater, hidden on Bush Street in Polk Gulch, has been quietly - and sometimes loudly - trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.1of11

Since 1975, the Audium Theater, hidden on Bush Street in Polk Gulch, has been quietly – and sometimes loudly – trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.

Mariah Tiffany / Special for SFGATE

Jazz piano tunes and street shots of San Francisco bounce around the room like ping pong balls from speaker to speaker.2of11

Jazz piano tunes and street shots of San Francisco bounce around the room like ping pong balls from speaker to speaker.

Mariah Tiffany / Special for SFGATE3of11

Since 1975, the Audium Theater, hidden on Bush Street in Polk Gulch, has been quietly - and sometimes loudly - trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.4thof11

Since 1975, the Audium Theater, hidden on Bush Street in Polk Gulch, has been quietly – and sometimes loudly – trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.

Mariah Tiffany / Special for SFGATE

Since 1975, the Audium Theater, hidden on Bush Street in Polk Gulch, has been quietly - and sometimes loudly - trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.5of11

Since 1975, the Audium Theater, hidden on Bush Street in Polk Gulch, has been quietly – and sometimes loudly – trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.

Mariah Tiffany / Special for SFGATE6thof11

Since 1975, the Audium Theater, hidden on Bush Street in Polk Gulch, has been quietly - and sometimes loudly - trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.7thof11

Since 1975, the Audium Theater, hidden on Bush Street in Polk Gulch, has been quietly – and sometimes loudly – trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.

Mariah Tiffany / Special for SFGATE

Dave Shaff, manager of the Audium Theater.8thof11

Dave Shaff, manager of the Audium Theater.

Mariah Tiffany / Special for SFGATE9of11

Since 1975, the Audium Theater, hidden on Bush Street in Polk Gulch, has been quietly - and sometimes loudly - trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.10of11

Since 1975, the Audium Theater, hidden on Bush Street in Polk Gulch, has been quietly – and sometimes loudly – trying to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.

Mariah Tiffany / Special for SFGATE11of11

The whole composition feels childlike, and the way the sound moves around the room feels more fluid than mechanical, and is moved by a hand rather than a mouse. The ideas and techniques are nothing new, the same composition could have been played on the opening weekend of the audience, but something about it still sounds fresh today. Simply put, the place just has soul.

The music gets quieter and it now sounds like I’m sitting next to a babbling creek, but maybe the creek is flowing down the sidewalk of Bush Street and ambient shots from quieter parts of San Francisco gently fill the room. I’m still in a trance, not exactly sure how long. When I open my eyes, I notice that the lights have already been turned back on.

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