For 46 years, this soulful oddity has been San Francisco s best-kept musical secret
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Jazz piano melodies and San Francisco street recordings bounce around the room like ping pong balls from speaker to speaker.Mariah Tiffany/ Special to SFGATE
In the Audium’s pitch-dark concert space, sound is the only color. Since 1975, this theater hidden off Bush Street in Polk Gulch has quietly and sometimes loudly tried to redefine how San Francisco thinks about music.
The humble performance space feels like a college lecture hall crossed with a mid-century modern rec room. Speakers are everywhere; at last official count, there were 176. Speakers of various shapes and sizes dangle from the ceiling like stalactites. They re also tucked underneath grates in the floor and hidden in the walls. Audium has used the same chairs for 46 years, zig-zag metal frames with plush red cushions. For COVID-19 purposes, there’s only 11 chairs, spread far apart. I sit down, the light
The new Audium Sound Hour offers San Francisco a curated immersive sound environment to promote calm and wellness as the city recovers from the pandemic. Experience field recordings and electronic sounds that will take audiences on a journey from the streets of San Francisco to a place inside themselves. The historic sound theater is keeping everyone safe with an updated HVAC system, small-group venue bookings only, and full sanitization of the venue between groups.
Audium s pitch-black, 176-speaker space has been upgraded, allowing for crisper and more immersive sound movement than ever before. Listeners will be immersed in sound scenes that jump off the walls. Spring from the loud clatter of the Tenderloin to a remote Baker Beach cave. A familiar afternoon in the Sunset District gives way to an ecstatic celebration in the Mission.