$35 million facility planned for MSU College of Music

Ken Glickman | For the Lansing State Journal

Official ground breaking for Michigan State University’s new $35 million addition to the College of Music isn’t until October, but Dean James Forger just couldn’t wait.

So on Wednesday he brought together interim MSU President John Engler, a faculty jazz band, donors, university trustees and even a college of music undergraduate to trumpet the decision to finally build the building they have been working on for years.

The $35 million project will add 37,000 square feet to the Music Building and renovate 8,500 square feet of existing space. Half of the money will come from donations. When it’s done, the building will be called the MSU Music Pavilion.

“This feels like Christmas Eve,” said Dee Cook, a former university trustee and campaign co-chair for the project. “It was a long time coming. With 600 students, this is the smallest college in the university. But this will be serving the entire university and region.”

Forger has headed MSU’s music program since 1990 and has been working toward this goal for just about the entire time.

The current College of Music building was built in 1940 and lots of things have changed since then, both in music and building construction. For instance, the current practice rooms are 55 square feet.

“When you open the door, it hits the piano bench,” Forger said. “Don’t forget, some of our piano majors will practice four to six hours per day in that room. The new rooms will be 120 to 210 square feet.”

Gwendolyn Dease, professor and chair of the percussion area, said, “We do a lot of outreach at schools and colleges throughout Michigan, and almost all other places have better facilities that we do.”

MSU’s jazz program, under Rodney Whitaker, is world class. The opera program, lead by Melanie Helton, had built a strong audience and presents excellent performances.

But the college’s success didn’t make it easier to get funding for a new building.

Way back in 1982, when Wharton Center was first built, MSU also had plans for a third, 1,000-seat hall with a new music building. That idea didn’t last long.

In 2003, Forger got excited about a plan for the new building that would have been built in the parking lot next to the MSU Auditorium, but the economy didn’t allow that to happen.

Forger said that it became clear that, because building a new music building is very expensive, the college might have to settle for rehabbing auditoriums around campus and, later, build an addition onto the existing structure.

“It became: Let’s move forward with incremental plans that are doable,” Forger said.

So, in 2012, the noisy and stuffy music auditorium in the music building was totally rebuilt to become the Cook Recital Hall. One year later, the echo-filled Fairchild Theater went through a major overhaul. The Spartan Marching Band was moved into renovated space at Demonstration Hall.

But the problems of the 1940 building remained. New freshmen were told that the sound in the practice rooms was so bad that they might have to purchase ear plugs to protect their hearing.

Percussion head Dease probably had the hardest job.

“We have literally thousands of instruments – bass drums, timpani, cymbals, Latin drums, snare drums, xylophones, marimbas, trap sets and many more,” she said. “Our students must practice on all these instruments, and we are now housed in the basement in very small rooms. Everyone has worked hard to overcome the facility. We have low ceilings and very bad light. It’s not great for your health, and you really don’t know what you sound like. “

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Building a music school is the ultimate acoustic challenge. How do you accommodate a 100-piece concert band is rehearsing at full volume, while a violinist is practicing his or her etudes down the hall, a jazz band is swinging a few feet away and a choir is singing a madrigal in an adjoining room?

“Building a music building is the least efficient and most expensive construction job on campus,” Forger said. “This will be an all concrete-poured facility. We’ll have double walls and even special light ballasts that will not emit sound. There will be a vast amount of sound deadening materials.”

The Music Pavilion will feature three large rehearsal rooms: a jazz rehearsal and performance hall, a large rehearsal hall for bands and orchestras and a medium rehearsal hall and a percussion rehearsal room. There will also be 45 new practice rooms and a new lobby.

Below the new rehearsal spaces will be state-of-the-art technology for recording and mixing equipment for film and video music.

“Most of this building will be for student learning, not performance space,” Forger said.

“The Music Pavilion will not be a Taj Mahal, nor should it be.”