Classical music superstars Lang Lang and Yo-Yo Ma will perform with the San Diego Symphony here this spring as a prelude to the postponed re-opening of the orchestra’s Copley Symphony Hall at Jacobs Music Center next fall.

The downtown concert venue, which began renovations for its comprehensive $125 million redesign in 2021, was originally set to re-open last November. But a series of unexpected construction and redesign challenges proved considerably more intricate and time-consuming than anticipated. And hopes that the 95-year-old hall might instead be ready to reopen this May didn’t pan out.

“Everybody has put all of their energy into getting it done as early as possible — and getting it done right — and getting it right has always been non-negotiable,” San Diego Symphony CEO Martha Gilmer said in an interview.

“I feel very comfortable knowing now we will open in the fall and that we’ll have a great lead-up to get people excited.”

The symphony is today, Feb. 23, also announcing five concerts at three San Diego County venues to conclude its 2024 Jacobs Masterworks spring series. An announcement of the 2024-25 season at the orchestra’s downtown hall will be made in April, Gilmer said.

When it became apparent reopening the hall last fall would not be possible, the symphony’s 2023-24 season was truncated and concerts were moved to other venues. A similar template will be used for the 114-year-old orchestra’s five spring concerts.

Three of them will take place at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, the year-round $85 million outdoor concert venue the symphony opened alongside San Diego Bay in August 2021. The venue quickly became a San Diego landmark and was featured that September in the international roll-out of Apple’s iPhone 13.

The Shell has since hosted a number of the symphony’s fall, winter and spring performances during the renovation of its hall, including some originally scheduled for the pushed-back 2023-24 season.

Two of the newly announced spring concerts were scheduled for the hall. The symphony’s first-ever concerts with famed conductor Michael Tilson Thomas — which were scheduled for March 23 and 24 — have been pushed back until after the fall re-opening of the hall.

The May 18 performance at the Shell is a collaboration with San Diego Opera on Richard Wagner’s “Die Walküre: Act 1,” which has not been performed in San Diego since a mid-1970s San Diego Opera production was staged. The May 18 concert celebrates the 20th anniversary of the opera company’s partnership with the symphony.

“We wanted to do something really, really special and unique with the opera,” San Diego Symphony Music Director Rafael Payare said. “I’m very excited about what we have planned. To do the Wagner, surrounded by the ocean and with special projections on The Shell itself, is not something we could do in our new hall.

“The five spring concerts are not a new season, but a continuation of the 2023/2024 Masterworks Series we started last fall at The Shell and at Carnegie Hall.”

Another Wagner piece, the Prelude to Act III of “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,” will be part of the orchestra’s May 7 performance at San Diego Civic Theatre. That downtown venue is only a few blocks away from Jacobs Music Center’s Copley Symphony Hall.

The decision to push the hall’s reopening to this fall was driven by artistic factors, Gilmer stressed. Principal among these is to ensure the redesigned venue’s acoustics and comfort level will be first-rate for performers and audiences alike.

“The orchestra members will have time to be on that stage in the hall before it reopens,” Gilmer said. “I told them last week (Feb. 13) we will not take any shortcuts with the time for them to get used to the new hall and new acoustical environment.”

That goal is shared by Payare, who is also the music director of the Montreal Symphony. He will conduct three of the San Diego Symphony’s five upcoming spring concerts, including a May 7 performance with cello great Yo-Yo Ma.

“We want to take the time needed for our musicians to get comfortable with the redesigned hall, rather than just meet a deadline,” Payare said.

“We have always said we will do it right, not halfway. We still want the hall to be ready as soon as possible. But we also want to be sure that we have time test it and fine-tune it. And it’s a big advantage that — when we re-open the hall — it won’t be the first time the orchestra has been on that stage.”

San Diego Symphony music director Rafael Payare (left) and symphony CEO Martha Gilmer have been working intensely on the fall reopening of the orchestra’s downtown Jacobs Music Center’s Copley Symphony Hall. Its comprehensive $125 million renovation has taken a year longer than originally scheduled.

(Eduardo Contreras/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The hall opened in 1929 as the Fox Theatre and became the indoor home of the symphony in 1984. The ongoing renovation is an extensive, top-to-bottom undertaking. It extends over eight levels — from the hall’s basement to the parking garage above the ceiling of the stage — in downtown’s 34-story Symphony Towers building.

Some of the many steps taken include removing rows of seats from the main floor and balcony, adding a permanent elevated choral terrace at the rear of the stage, installing a new HVAC system and moving a wall closer to the stage to improve acoustics and sight lines. Miles of electronic cable have been removed and new cables installed and rerouted.

“It’s quite a feat of engineering and (historically accurate) craftsmanship,” Gilmer said. “Painstaking details were required to coordinate everything that had to go into the new hall. It was a hundred things — not just one thing — that all required that high attention to detail, and it took time.”

Gilmer has been the symphony’s CEO since 2014. She was instrumental in ensuring more than 99 percent of the $85 million budget for the construction of the Shell came from private funding.

In October 2022, the symphony announced it had reached the goal for its $125 million “The Future is Hear” fundraising campaign. That money was used for the Shell, the ongoing renovation of the hall, and to help mitigate the impact of the pandemic-fueled shutdown of live events that — for a time — had silenced the orchestra.

“There have been frustrating moments and there’s no magic wand,” Gilmer said. “But we are coming out of this with an incredibly robust reinvention of a 95-year old hall, and leaving this wonderful legacy for future audiences in San Diego.”

2024 spring Jacobs Masterworks concerts

Tickets go on sale today, Feb. 23, at 10 a.m. online at sandiegosymphony.org, by phone at (619) 235-0804, and at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park box office, 222 Marina Park Way, downtown.

Friday, March 22, at 8 p.m.: “Musical Reverberations: Farías, Ravel, Tchaikovsky” — Farías’ Estallido, Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique,” featuring guest conductor Paolo Bortolameolli and pianist Janice Carissa. California Center for the Arts, Escondido, 340 North Escondido Blvd., Escondido; $25-$70.

Friday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m.: “Lang Lang by the Bay” — Joey Roukens’ 365, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake Suite, Berlioz’s Le corsaire Overture, Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2, featuring pianist Lang Lang and guest conductor Otto Tausk. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 222 Marina Park Way, downtown; $35-$220.

Tuesday, May 7, at 8 p.m.: “An Evening with Yo-Yo Ma” — Wagner’s Prelude to Act III of “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,” Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64, featuring San Diego Symphony Music Director Rafael Payare and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave., downtown; $109-$299.

Saturday, May 18 at 7:30 p.m.: Wagner’s “Die Walküre,” in collaboration with San Diego Opera — Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, Wagner’s “Die Walküre: Act 1,” featuring San Diego Symphony Music Director Rafael Payare, violinist Daniel Lozakovich, soprano Jennifer Holloway, tenor Viktor Antipenko and bass Peter Rose. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 222 Marina Park Way, downtown; $25-$108.

Saturday, May 25 at 6:30 p.m.: “Stravinsky’s The Firebird” — Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, the complete Stravinsky’s The Firebird, featuring San Diego Symphony Music Director, Rafael Payare and pianist Jeremy Denk. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 222 Marina Park Way, downtown; $25-$108.

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