New York Society for Ethical Culture — Local services in New York

Sadly, as lovely as this venue is to look at, it is one of the LEAST reliable and unpredictable halls with regards to sound in all of New York City.

My wife and I have been four shows here over the course of the last ten years, and the most recent one (Michael Nesmith and the First National Band Redux) will probably be our last. Nesmith's vocals, and the backing vocalists, were buried. Instrument amps were not mic'd properly, or the stage monitors were not set carefully. Basically, whichever instrument you were seated closest to greatly dominated your soundscape. Poor, poor, work. And this was the third out of the four shows that we have seen there where we left complaining about how bad the sound was.

Just to put it into perspective, I have done sound for my own band, and for many national acts at a small (150 seat) not-for-profit facility on Long Island that does not charge for performances. I would have been embarrassed to allow a show to have sounded the way the Nesmith show did. Truthfully, ANY venue that charges $50+ for a ticket to sit in ANY seat in their venue had better be quite sure that the person sitting in that seat is going to have a positive experience from an acoustic standpoint.

I should also add that we saw the show two nights later at another venue, and the sound was sterling!

If it's one or two performers with acoustic guitars ... well, maybe it would be worth going, what the heck. I mean, how much can go wrong? But if there is a band involved, my advice would be...

Attended a thoughtfully stacked climate event focused on female leadership, where a mix of in person and digital guests joined to speak. To be honest the seats were not that comfortable (I was stuck in an asile seat) and wearing a mask inside has been an ongoing issue of comfort… I walked in late so I generally didn’t get to explore the space as much as I would have liked.

View was generally good from middle section, back row of floor seats but I couldn’t tell how loud of sound I was making when I went into the entry way up/down the center stairs… up to the seating level (main floor in front of stage area)

Microphones on some guests were harder to hear but this was more of an issue with the speaker wearing the mic than the acoustic environment itself.

Decent lighting but would prefer to talk more to people near me (rather than listen to featured speaker after speaker) in this sort of setting rather than it feeling like the unreached/small talk sort of vibe you get from sitting in a church and having to turn to the person next, in front of, but rarely behind to you…

Overall I wonder which other kinds of events they hold here and if i’ll make it...

As a concert venue, this is a hidden Manhattan gem. As for the organization, it certainly sounds worthwhile. But I have no first-hand knowledge.

About the venue for concerts. There is literally not a bad seat in the house - even in the balcony or far l/r orchestra. And the acoustics are wonderful. A nice natural sound. There are church pews instead of seats. But they're comfortable enough with padded seats.

The hall is well maintained and IMO beautiful in its simple white and dark wood. We saw Marc Cohn last night, maybe the 4th or 5th concert I've seen here. They have a lot more concerts than I knew, a regular ongoing bill that we will attend more often now...