Russell Johnson, the best ears on earth

Thank you all for your kind words about my brother.

One thing that confuses me about concert halls.
Why hasn't the interior configuration become standardized, like the shape of the violin?

NL: Because, I gather, of the increased size of halls. Above the standard 1,800-seat shoebox hall, acoustics have to be tailored to the varied dimensions of halls.

I had the good fortune to work with Russ at Artec for 17 years, from a few years out of graduate school until just a few years ago. I have read his obituaries printed in many of the newspapers around the world and I am struck by one conspicuously missing contribution Russ made to the field - his influence on younger generations of acousticians and theatre consultants.

Though he often referred to Artec projects as his children, the field is now populated with many, many brilliant acousticians and theatre consultants who built their chops at what Russ (tongue-in-cheek) would refer to as the "University of Artec". Whether from the monthly "Tech Sessions" (in later years the "Colloquy"), or in day-to-day design work, we had wonderful opportunities to learn, to make contributions to project design and to see that Russ never "crystallized", but rather that he remained quite agile in performance space design.

I suspect that many of my fellow "alumni" will agree that the field has advanced not only from Russell Johnson's design of many of the world's well-loved concert halls, but also from his mentoring of a multitude of talented younger designers.

I had the pleasure of working with Russell for more than twenty years - particularly having to make the mechanics of his acoustic architecture work. I loved, above all, the way he would state, quite clearly, that "he was not ready to talk about acoustics yet" in the early meetings with orchestras and constituents. As a friend he was a delightful, circumspect and witty chap and a funny dinner guest. I will miss him a lot, and our future halls (whilst getting, pehaps, a little slimmer) will be unlikely to sound like a Russell Johnson hall.