The Schermerhorn Symphony Center is a concert hall in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. Ground was broken on December 3, 2003. The center formally opened on September 9, 2006, with a gala concert conducted by Leonard Slatkin and broadcast by PBS affiliates throughout the state. The center is named in honor of Kenneth Schermerhorn ( ), who was the music director and conductor of the Nashville Symphony from 1983 until his death in 2005; the center was named before maestro Schermerhorn's death. Architecture and design At the heart of Schermerhorn Symphony Center is the , 1,844-seat Laura Turner Concert Hall, which is home to the Nashville Symphony. The hall is of the shoebox style. It features natural lighting, which streams in through 30 soundproof, double-paned clerestory windows. Intricate symbolic motifs appear throughout the hall and the rest of the center, including irises (the Tennessee state flower), horseshoes (a tribute to the late Laura Turner's love of horses) and coffee beans (representing Nashville's Cheek family, which played a key role in the founding of the Nashville Symphony and also originally owned the Maxwell House Coffee brand). Seats in Laura Turner Concert Hall are distributed over three levels, including a special choral loft behind the stage that can seat up to 146 chorus members; the seats are made available to audience members during non-choral performances. The stage can accommodate up to 115 musicians. The hall also features the custom-built Martin Foundation Concert Organ, crafted by Schoenstein & Co. of San Francisco, which has 47 voices, 64 ranks, and 3,568 pipes with three 32-foot stops. The center's New Classical design blends elements of other Classical and Neoclassical structures in the city, such as the full-scale Parthenon replica and Nashville's main public library. The building's interior incorporates technological and acoustical features. The orchestra-level seats are mounted on motorized wagons that can be driven forward and lowered through the floor on a system of lifts, revealing an ornate Brazilian cherry and hickory parquet floor. These "chair-wagons" enable the concert hall to be converted into a ballroom in approximately two hours. Dozens of motorized acoustic drapes and panels can be quickly adjusted to accommodate many styles of acoustic and amplified music. The Laura Turner Concert Hall is insulated from exterior noise by an acoustical isolation joint, a 2-inch gap of air that encircles the hall and prevents transmission of sound waves in or out. Schermerhorn Symphony Center also