What it is
Phoenix Symphony Hall is the 2,312-seat concert hall on 2nd Street between Washington and Adams Streets in downtown Phoenix, the performance half of the Civic Plaza complex the city built at the start of the 1970s. It was designed by Charles Luckman, the architect of Madison Square Garden and the Prudential Tower, in the concrete Brutalist manner of the time, finished in 1972, and rebuilt inside in 2004 with an $18.5 million renovation carried out alongside the Convention Center’s West Building. Three companies call it home: the Phoenix Symphony, Ballet Arizona and Arizona Opera, whose seasons together fill the calendar from September through May, with touring concerts and speakers in between.
It is not a beautiful building from the street. Inside, it is a good hall, with clear sound for an orchestra, sightlines that work from the balconies and a scale that fits a city orchestra rather than dwarfing it.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Scottsdale has excellent small halls, the 850-seat theater at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, the Kerr Cultural Center with its 200 seats and perfect acoustics, and Arizona Musicfest brings a festival orchestra to North Scottsdale each winter. What it does not have is a full-season symphony, a ballet company with its own Nutcracker, or an opera company, and all three live here, 25 minutes from Old Town. Our live music note covers the Scottsdale side; this is where the big classical night happens, and in December it is where the Valley’s families go for the Nutcracker, which our holiday season note has on its list.
The practical version
Tickets through each company’s website, not the hall. Twenty-five minutes from Old Town, 40 on a weeknight at curtain time; the light rail stop at 3rd and Washington is a block away. Convention Center garages all around, priced by event and fuller on Suns nights. Eat before at Hanny’s, two blocks north, or drink after at Bitter & Twisted, three blocks south. Dress is whatever you want; Phoenix is not a formal town.
When to go
The season runs roughly September through May, matching the Valley’s own. The Phoenix Symphony’s classics series plays most weekends in that window, with a pops series and film-score concerts mixed in; Ballet Arizona’s Nutcracker runs through much of December and is the hall’s busiest stretch; Arizona Opera stages its Phoenix productions across the season, usually a weekend run each. Summer is quiet, with the companies dark and the hall used for touring acts and convention events. For a Scottsdale visitor in high season, January through March, a Saturday symphony concert is an easy add to a downtown day and tickets are rarely scarce outside the Nutcracker and the biggest opera nights.
What to see here
The Symphony first, if you have one night: the classics series is the hall at its best acoustically, and the balcony seats are both cheaper and better-sounding than the front of the orchestra level. The Nutcracker is the family event and sells on Valley word of mouth, so buy early. Arizona Opera is the ambitious choice; it is a touring company split between Phoenix and Tucson, with productions that punch above the city’s size. Check the Convention Center’s calendar as well for the touring concerts and speakers that fill the gaps.
With kids
The Nutcracker is the obvious one, and the Symphony’s family and film-score concerts are the next step; a nine-year-old who sits through a movie will sit through a film-score night. Full-length opera is for teenagers who asked for it.
The neighborhood
The hall sits in the Convention Center blocks on the east side of downtown’s core, between the arena two blocks west and Heritage Square two blocks east, with Chase Field a few blocks south. The blocks are quiet at night outside of events, so plan dinner: Hanny’s on 1st Street for pizza and a kitchen that respects curtain times, Bitter & Twisted at Central and Jefferson for the cocktail after.
The story
Symphony Hall was part of the bargain Phoenix made with itself at the end of the 1960s: tear down several blocks of the old downtown east of Central, build a convention center and a concert hall, and call it Civic Plaza. Construction began in 1969, and the hall opened in 1972 to a design by Charles Luckman, the Los Angeles architect and former Lever Brothers president whose firm built Madison Square Garden and the Prudential Tower in Boston. The Phoenix Symphony, founded in 1947 and until then a tenant of high school auditoriums and borrowed theaters, finally had a room of its own; Ballet Arizona and Arizona Opera followed as they grew.
By the turn of the century the hall was tired, and in June 2004 the city spent $18.5 million rebuilding it, in tandem with the much larger Convention Center expansion that produced the West Building next door; the renovated house reopened with 2,312 seats, new lobbies and refreshed acoustics. The light rail arrived at 3rd and Washington in 2008, and the hall settled into its current role as the downtown anchor for the Valley’s classical calendar.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s performing-arts history is a story of chamber-scale rooms: Louise Lincoln Kerr’s studio on Scottsdale Road, now the Kerr Cultural Center, the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts on the Civic Center mall, and the festival orchestras Arizona Musicfest assembles each winter. The Phoenix Symphony has played Scottsdale’s halls for decades and many of its musicians teach and live there, but the full orchestra, the ballet and the opera have always needed a bigger room than Scottsdale has built. The hall is the reason a Scottsdale resident’s season tickets have a downtown address.
Getting there
From Old Town, west on McDowell Road to 7th Street, south to Washington Street, west to 2nd Street; the hall is on the east side of 2nd between Washington and Adams, with Convention Center garages on the surrounding blocks. On a night when the Suns are at home two blocks west, the garages fill and prices double, so arrive early or take the light rail to 3rd Street and Washington, a block away; our getting around note covers the train from the Camelback corridor stations and the rideshare math back to Scottsdale after a 10 PM curtain.