They pop even more brightly flanked by state-of-the-art line-array speakers hanging from the ceiling.
A little farther up, the murals are restored and individually lit on the walls, now painted in green, yellow, red and touches of gold to match the 1920s venue's original Louis XIV design.
Combined with new lightly colored hardwood floors, the room looks like the Wilma, but refreshed.
"For us, it's a balance between the history of the building and making it a cool, contemporary space. I think you want it to (have) both," said Nick Checota, who owns the venue with his wife Robin.
The two bought the theater last spring, closed it in mid-June for renovations, and reopened it this month after a few whirlwind months of renovations that touched nearly every aspect of the building.
They've kept in mind the theater's significant place in downtown Missoula while imbuing it with ambitions beyond the city limits.
"It's going to be one of the best venues in the West," Nick Checota said. For rooms under 3,000 capacity, he wants to make it known around the country.
The final push was underway last week for Monday's grand reopening with rock act My Morning Jacket, who've never played in Montana before.
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Checota worked for decades in medical real estate before buying and extensively renovating the Top Hat Lounge.
Like that project, he's served as his own superintendent at the Wilma, and traveled to similarly sized venues for ideas about sound and audience experience.
On a tour of the venue, he can reel off the nearly endless details both large and minute that are designed to improve the concert experience.
The concession stand and the wall behind it are gone, eliminating the bottlenecks that occur at crowded concerts. Once you step into the lobby, you have a clear view straight onto the stage.
The smaller movie theater has been removed to create a meet-and-greet VIP room, which will also be available as a rental space for private parties.
Inside the theater, the murals were a sore sight, with exposed plaster and what was likely water damage that left many of them beyond repair.
Painter Amanda Biebly was hired to recreate the new ones, and spent several weeks on high scaffolding, working out the trompe l'oeil flourishes. She also painted the lobby and other sections of the building, where there was extensive plasterwork.
A fresh design on the ceiling "hopefully draws your eye to the fixtures," Checota said, pointing to the iconic art-deco chandelier. He and Robin handled the interior design, and took care of some of the smaller light fixtures on their own.
"My wife and I did those in our garage," he said. "It was quite the project."
The former slanted floor has been replaced with three tiers with hardwood flooring, accounting for one portion of the 20,000 square feet of hardwood installed, and many of the tiers are now handicapped accessible.
The old red movie chairs were torn out and sold for a benefit. Now for seated shows, they'll use brand-new removable padded chairs with armrests that can be locked together in rows.
Some shows can use cabaret-style seating, or a mix of seating on the tiers and standing room in the front.
The balcony upstairs has all new, fixed seating on hardwood floors. The old bar on the mezzanine is gone, creating more space for the formerly cramped bathrooms, which now boast more space for extra sinks and stalls.
If you're sitting upstairs and want a drink, you'll now head toward the old projection booth, which has been replaced by a sleek bar.
There's an area to mingle and gaze way down to the stage.
"You can be up here having a drink. It's probably the best view in the house," Checota said.
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The regular screenings of independent movies won't return. There's space there to arrange the digital projectors needed for the annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, outdoors movies and perhaps the occasional feature film as the schedule allows.
Checota envisions having 10 to 12 events a month, including concerts and stand-up comedy. The rest of the time it will be available for rent as a banquet hall for community groups and events, or staples such as "The Rocky Horror Show Live" later this month.
There are less visible repairs as well: new air-conditioning and an all-new electrical system.
The green room downstairs, with its decades of graffiti and battle-worn carpet, has been completely "gutted," he said.
There's now a specific green room for the headliner, with a lounge area, dressing room, bathroom and dining area. The support acts have a room to themselves not far from the offices for production staff and another shower.
The catering will be done by the kitchen at the Top Hat; for My Morning Jacket they have to provide three meals to more than 20 people.
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The lure for many touring acts and audience members might be the sound alone.
The improvements to that aspect of the venue account for nearly $900,000 to a $1 million of the total costs.
The line-array speakers come from L-Acoustics, and the digital soundboard from DiGiCo.
L-Acoustics was sending two of its engineers to fine-tune everything before Monday's concert; and on Thursday, Wilma employees were getting trained by a DiGiCo technician.
As it was, the theater was built for musical performances in simpler times: to project a singer's voice and organ around the room.
It was "beautifully designed" for that purpose, said acoustics expert "Skip" Kahane, but it isn't enough for today's highly produced, high-decibel concerts.
He's worked with Wilma owners going back 20 years, and said there has never been any technological acoustic absorption work done at the theater.
The fabric on the walls hides new sound-dampening material, and some walls in the balcony bear sound dampeners as well.
"The room's too loud," Checota said. "It's too alive. It has too much energy. You have to deaden it."
The adjustments should eliminate the bad pockets of sound in the back of the main floor.
"The cavity was producing reverberation, which was being shelved right in front of the balcony," Kahane said.
It should sound better to the artists as well, with changes to the stage.
"They would get this horrible slap-back off this concrete," Checota said, pointing to the sides of the stage.
Diffusers on the sides of the stage scatter the sound so it isn't projected back at the performers, and the rear wall is covered with sound-dampening material as well.
The new speakers, along with the venue's acoustic signature, should add up to "an unparalleled listening experience," according to Kahane.
A new lighting system has been installed, and the stage was raised 21 inches.
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There are hospitality changes in the works as well, including a shift toward a more service-oriented staff, and they'll get people into the lobby much more quickly.
"We will have multiple ticket-takers, multiple ID check stations. Moving people into the venue will be a much faster process," he said.
Bands can sell their merchandise at a table at a designated booth inset into the south wall of the lobby.
Two, wide new bars have been built underneath the two staircases, each one large enough for three wells and three bartenders, serving beer and liquor courtesy of a new license.
Checota tracks wait times and plans to keep the service turnaround tight.
"Our rule at the Top Hat is you should never wait more than two to four minutes for a drink, except for when the Lil' Smokies play," he said.
The new cooler is the size of some people's bedrooms.
"When you've got 1,400 people in a room, you go through a lot of beer fast," he said.
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Checota wants to bring in even bigger-name acts than the Wilma booked before.
But that might take some time, maybe a full year, for word of mouth about the renovations to spread.
"You can't hit this right out of the gate. You have to have a little buzz go on, and agents have to hear about it, and management has to talk about it," he said.
The schedule for the remainder of the year is filling out, with concerts by the Dave Rawlings Machine and Patty Griffin in October, famed guitarist Richard Thompson in November, and Dweezil Zappa's Zappa Plays Zappa band in December.
Perks like a solo acoustic set by Thompson before his electric set are available for an additional ticket's worth, or a VIP sound-check party at the Zappa concert.
Before the removal of movie seats downstairs, the maximum capacity at the venue was 1,067.
Now it caps out at 1,400 when there's standing-room-only on the main floor.
The extra capacity, he pointed out, adds up to five digits for an artist.
Checota does his booking in-house, as he does as the Top Hat, but fans can expect a broader range of music than he aims for at that venue, which has a few core genres: Americana, indie-rock, reggae and funk, and bluegrass.
Staples of the Knitting Factory Presents days, such as electronic music, will have a place on the schedule.
Kahane, the sound expert and a Wilma devotee, says he never thought he'd live to see the venue get these improvements.
They'll "give it a history of its own as a venue. It'll get an opportunity to put its stamp on the Pacific Northwest."
http://missoulian.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/wilma-emerges-from-renovation-eager-to-make-history/article_a4c22a88-eff5-53d1-957a-22cfb4df1398.html
