It’s been almost a full year since the BYU School of Music moved into the Music Building. Every square inch of the building was built and designed to accommodate a variety of music acoustics. Thanks to a recent article from Y Magazine, we’ve got a 360-degree view of the building’s best features. Let’s take a look!
The Lobby
With east-facing windows, the lobby boasts one of the best views of Y Mountain that this campus has to offer. The windows span three stories and the hanging, candle-like lights create a bright, welcoming space. During the day, visitors might enjoy a spontaneous concert in the lobby from soloists or student quartets. In the evening, the lobby acts as a reception space for patrons attending concerts in the building's performance spaces.
The Concert Hall
The vineyard-style Concert Hall sits in the heart of the music building and spans all four floors. There isn’t a bad seat in the hall—acoustically or visually. Even though the Concert Hall seats 1,000 audience members, the farthest anyone can sit from the stage is 15 rows back. Wood panels above the stage and around the edges of the hall are customizable to create the perfect acoustic atmosphere for each group on stage. Concerts are intimate, inclusive experiences for performers and audiences alike!
Studio Y
When the HFAC was built in 1964, the field of commercial and computer music might not have warranted extensive teaching and rehearsal space. For years, commercial music majors and instructors packed into the tiny Studio Y for instruction and recordings, often standing shoulder to shoulder. Now, the new Studio Y comfortably seats 24 students who can observe control boards via large display monitors mounted on the wall. The studio is also outfitted with a dedicated studio space for recording. Complete with isolation booths and adjustable acoustic paneling, the room can fit large and small ensembles alike.
The Recital Hall
The Recital Hall is a dedicated performance space for smaller ensemble and solo recitals. Though smaller than the Concert Hall (seating just over 250), the Recital Hall is also an intimate concert space. Built with acoustics in mind, the Recital Hall fosters clear, undiluted sound, and even operatic soloists need no microphone to fill the space with their music.
The Choral Hall
For decades the School of Music has boasted a thriving choral program. But in the Harris Fine Arts Center, choirs would rehearse in the Madsen Recital Hall, often sharing the space with other classes and scheduled performances. Now, all five BYU choirs have a dedicated rehearsal space of their own, complete with a loft organ transported from the HFAC. The Choral Hall comfortably sits over 200 students, with ample room for even the largest choir—the 180-man Men’s Chorus—to rehearse.
Practice Rooms
If you ever happened to pass through halls lined with practice rooms in the basement of the HFAC around noon, a cacophony of sounds would have greeted your ears. The fugues of trumpets and tubas used to blend with the measured scales of violins and violas. Now, if you pass through the brightly-lit halls of the fourth floor of the Music Building, few streams of notes will leak into the hallway. Within the practice rooms, outfitted with sound-absorbing panels, students enjoy a quieter practicing atmosphere.
The North and South Ensemble Rooms
The North and South Ensemble Rooms were designed specifically to accommodate the larger performance ensembles at BYU—the BYU Philharmonic and the BYU Symphony. The rooms boast tall ceilings—but they’re not just for show. The extra cubic space provided by the tall ceilings protect the ears and hearing of students and faculty by allowing sound to travel upward and away from the musicians.
The Box
The Box replicates the dimensions of the theater stage planned for the new Arts Building. This allows students preparing for operas and performances to rehearse in a space similar to their anticipated performance space. Equipped with specialty lighting and surround-sound speakers, the room also doubles as a versatile performance space for multidisciplinary concerts and electronic music performances.
This article was originally published in the December 2023 issue of the BYU School of Music Journal.
