Optimum seats for a concert?

Anywhere but in the pit, where I sat for a number of years. Down there, where many players now wear earplugs to protect their hearing, one is highly focused on production but inattentive to the overall sound, which one cannot really hear, anyway.

There's an apocryphal story really understood only by pit musicians about two bassoonists who played side by side for two decades. Unexpectedly, one took a week's vacation right in the middle of the season. The first night he was away, his colleague looked up out of the pit and there sat his friend in the 10th row. Amazingly, he was there every night for a week.

When he returned, his buddy said, "I can't believe it. For twenty years you never take a vacation, then you take a week off and spend it sitting in the 10th row."

"Yeah," exulted his pal, "and you wouldn't believe what I heard. You know that part where we go BOOMP-boomp-BOOMP-boomp-BOOMP-boomp-BOOMP?"

"Sure. I know that part. What about it."

"Well, man, while we're doing that the orchestra is going (bursts into the Toreador Song)."

You may respond to this with a blank look but tell it to anyone who has played the same score every night for three months and they'll fall out of the chair.

Anyone else here done any pit playing???

As a general rule of thumb, I've found that the highest seats available, and as close to center as possible, provide me with the best results.

I don't know much about acoustics, but my reasoning is simple:

Most audiences at symphony performances don't know how to sit still and keep quiet through even one movement, let alone an entire piece. When I sit up in the "cheap seats", there usually aren't many people up there, and I am therefore somewhat isolated from crowd noise.

As another rule of thumb, if the hall was built for a symphony orchestra it will have decent sound almost anywhere. Some multi-purpose halls have problems. George Mason University has a visually stunning arts center and an excellent schedule of events, but if you sit in the back-half of the hall forget it. The cheap seats in the back sound like you are in another room from the orchestra.

Then there are amazing places like the historic Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts. This was a union hall built in 1857 and is used now as a concert hall among other things. It is one of the best concert halls in the world accoustically. It is one of Yo Yo Ma's favorite places to play recitals. The Boston Baroque's B-Minor Mass (Bach) recording on Telarc was recorded there. They attract major orchestras and groups from all over the world.

Mechanics Hall is just a large room, not a theater. The classical schedule (there are others) is at http://www.musicworcester.org/calendar.html

See the attached link of a list of 76 great concert halls from around the world. (Mechanics Hall is on the list.)

http://www.fact.usu.edu/ece3260/Module6/WebAct/WebAct6.html

It is quite difficult to determine which seats are the best if you don't know the concert hall. In my case I know a several theatres with excellent acoustics and it's not even necessary to be in the middle. My personal like is when I can see the fingers of musicians since I do worship them.
I always watch after the soloist fingers and his/her artistic feelings during the performance which gives me an idea how one's understands/feels the music. So I prefer to sit not too far away from the orchestra.

The very main thing for audiofiles is not to take in mind that there are pair of speakers standing in the performance hall he..he..:)