Rice U. holds ceremonial groundbreaking for new music building

Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music held a ceremonial groundbreaking Dec. 7 for a new music building that together with Alice Pratt Brown Hall and adjoining plaza will form the Rice University Music and Performing Arts Center.

Rendering of east facade of new music building. Photo credit: Rice Shepherd School of Music.

The 84,000-square-foot facility will house a three-tiered, 600-seat, European-style theater with an orchestra pit for 70 musicians. It will be the first theater with this particular configuration among U.S. universities and conservatories.

Designed by Allan Greenberg Architect LLC, an architectural firm with offices in New York City and Alexandria, Va., the structure will offer premium performance space for opera and chamber music, meet the growing need for rehearsal and practice space and provide a hallmark venue to attract and host high-profile speakers.

Rice Board of Trustees President Bobby Tudor ’82 opened the event by thanking everyone for their support of the project, including steering committee co-chairs Anne Duncan and Susie Glasscock ’62. He called it “a great day for Rice and for Houston” and complimented the Shepherd School of Music for its role in shaping the artistic community of Houston. Photo by Jeff Fitlow.

Collaborating with Allan Greenberg on the design of the building’s theater and orchestra pit were theater planning and design consultants Fisher Dachs Associates and acoustic consultants Threshold Acoustics. The new theater will feature a state-of-the-art “pin-drop” acoustic experience created by Threshold Acoustics.

Construction crews formally broke ground on the facility in September 2017. The venue is slated to open in late 2020 with performances and public events.

“The new performing arts center will be an extraordinary addition to Rice and the city of Houston,” said Rice President David Leebron. “This new facility will do much to encourage and bolster the university’s arts education and activities and fits wonderfully into the emerging arts hub on the west side of campus.”

Rice President David Leebron said, “Our ambition and aspirations are not scaled to our size, and that’s clearly true with the ambition reflected in this extraordinary new facility, and the way it, and the Moody Center and other facilities will anchor the vision for our campus — a campus committed to the arts.”

“The Shepherd School of Music’s program is internationally renowned, with an orchestral program considered among the nation’s finest,” said Shepherd School Dean Robert Yekovich. “The opera program at the Shepherd School — home to stellar faculty, successful alumni and current students who are increasingly successful in the profession — is poised to join the orchestral program in this top tier. “The addition of such an exceptional performance space will further enhance our ability to realize this ambition.”

Yekovich said that the new facility, along with the Moody Center for the Arts, will provide spaces for Rice’s growing portfolio of multidisciplinary performing arts programming as well as support some curricular offerings in the theater program in the School of Humanities.

“This music and performing arts center will provide the physical support for the school’s far-reaching ambitions and cement its rank among our country’s top schools of music for many, many decades to come,” said Shepherd School of Music Dean Robert Yekovich during the groundbreaking ceremony. Photo by Jeff Fitlow.

Located near the most frequently used entrance to campus, the new music building will be near Alice Pratt Brown Hall, home of the Shepherd School; the Anderson-Clarke Center, which houses the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies; the Moody Center for the Arts; and Rice’s athletic venues.

“Through Shepherd School performances, our students and faculty share their extraordinary talents with a diverse range of attendees and make premier concert and opera experiences accessible to the Houston community at no cost, for nearly all performances,” Yekovich said. “All told, approximately 80,000 guests from across Houston and beyond attendat the Shepherd School annually, and we only expect that number to increase as we add additional capacity for performances in this new top-of-the-line facility. The addition of this building to this area of campus will enhance an existing hub on campus that is rich with opportunities for engaging constituents ‘beyond the hedges’ in a wide array of arts and cultural offerings.”

Shepherd School alumni have performed in leading performance venues throughout the U.S. and abroad and have received top awards. For a list of distinguished alumni, visit http://shepherdalumni.blogs.rice.edu/.

For more information on the Shepherd School, visit http://music.rice.edu.

More pictures from the groundbreaking are available in the Flickr gallery below.