Beall Concert Hall

Beall Concert Hall is the primary performance hall at the School of Music and Dance. It is used for more than 200 performances annually, including student and faculty recitals, concerts by UO ensembles and guest artists, and for conferences and special series such as the university of oregon chamber music series the oregon bach festival and the Music Today Festival. Besides the Oregon Bach Festival, the School of Music and Dance and Beall Concert Hall helped foster the beginning of several important musical organizations in Eugene, such as the eugene symphony orchestra the oregon mozart players, and the oregon festival of american music , to name a few. Beall Hall has become known as one of the premier recital halls in the country, hosting some of the finest chamber and solo musicians in the world, including the Guarneri, the Emerson, and Tokyo String Quartets, the Beaux Arts Trio, sopranos Arlene Auger and Phyllis Bryn-Julson, The King’s Singers, jazz artist Billy Taylor, pianist composer Bela Bartok, and sarod artist Ali Akbar Khan, a lecture by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the list goes on.

Ellis F. Lawrence, architect and founder of the University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts, designed Beall Concert Hall. Lawrence consistently produced buildings of distinction throughout the Northwest and is renowned for designing some of the most important and beautiful buildings on campus. These include the Museum of Art, the facade and original core of the Knight Library, and Gerlinger Hall. Beall Concert Hall merits recognition as a part of this strong and beautiful character.

Although the concert hall was built in 1921, it did not receive its current name until a half century later. Robert Vinton Beall (pronounced Bell), a farmer from the Medford area and a member of a pioneer family, attended the University of Oregon from 1894-97 and donated a sizable sum of money to the university to establish and maintain a living memorial to pioneer women in Oregon. His bequest funded construction of the School of Music and Dance’s nationally renowned Jurgen Ahrend organ, which was completed in 1972. The university named Beall Concert Hall in 1973 in honor of this legacy.

The concert hall is a brick bearing wall system with wood truss spanning members. The lovely ceiling with its distinctive ornamental cavities is one of the architectural highlights of the hall. Lawrence was a student in architecture in Boston during the time Boston Symphony Concert Hall was being built and used its design as inspiration when asked to build a music auditorium. Although smaller in scale and far less ornamental than Boston Symphony Hall, its architectural lineage is evident, including its exceptional acoustical properties.

The original windows in the hall were covered decades ago to control both light and acoustics. The original seats were folding wood seats on metal frames, and for acoustical reasons, are still used in the balcony. The seats on the main floor have been replaced twice, most recently in 1996 during a renovation of the hall that included a restored lobby to the style of the early 1920s.

Beall Concert Hall will continue its high tradition of service to the students of the University of Oregon, and will be an enduring focal point in the arts of our community and our state.

About the School

The School of Music and Dance began as the Department of Music in 1886. It became the School of Music in 1900 and was admitted to the National Association of Schools of Music in 1928. The standards of the school are in accordance with those of the association. The School of Music and Dance is a professional school in a university setting. The school is dedicated to furthering creativity, knowledge, pedagogy, and performance in music and dance and to preparing students for a variety of professions in these fields.

In 1986 the School of Music and Dance celebrated its 100th year as part of the University of Oregon. During its first century on campus it grew to become the only full-range professional school of music in the Oregon University System of Higher Education. Today it is widely regarded as one of the major music institutions of the Western United States.

Facilities

The School of Music and Dance contains a broad range of facilities and equipment: band, choir, and orchestra rehearsal rooms with support facilities; the 520-seat Beall Concert Hall, acclaimed by numerous guest artists for its superb acoustics; and the Collier House, home to the music history department and the Early Music Program.

Collier House
Collier House has been added to the list of School of Music and Dance facilities. Built in 1885-1886 by the Collier family, it is a rare example of a late Victorian house in bracketed Italianate-style with an Italianate styled interior popular in the Northwest in the late 1800s. It is the second oldest building on the UO campus. Both the house and grounds are listed on the Inventory of Historic Sites and Buildings. It has been a residential home, President's house, Chancellor's home, faculty club, restaurant, and meeting room/pub. Music history faculty offices and the Early Music Program were moved to Collier House in August 2004. A variety of courses, seminars, meetings and programs are held in the space.

Music Library the music service department of the university of oregon's knight library contains more than 40,000 recordings and 25,000 scores, a comprehensive collection of books on music, and a state-of-the-art listening room. The library's Reserve/Video Department contains a wide range of videos on music, dance, and other subjects.

Computer Music Center
The music school's computer music center, future music oregon features three studios with extensive MIDI-based and computer composition systems containing synthesis environments where all sound material can be created, edited, and saved from a central computer for future recall.

Computer Lab
The music school houses the kammerer microcomputer lab, with Macintosh computer work stations where you can work with mainstream software for music notation and instructional software in music theory and aural skills. Other resources in the laboratory include sequencing software, MIDI, and sound-generating software as well as facilities for exploring the Internet, using E-mail, graphics, and word processing.

Instruments
The university owns a large inventory of orchestral and band instruments. A collection of ethnic musical instruments includes Balinese and Javanese gamelans. Our keyboard inventory includes five Steinway concert grand pianos, four harpsichords, one clavichord, pianos in each classroom and practice room, and a modern group piano laboratory featuring Clavinova digital keyboards. The school houses three pipe organs, including the internationally renowned organ in Beall Concert Hall by Jürgen Ahrend of Germany, and other organs by Flentrop and Schlicker.

Lockers
The School of Music and Dance has a limited number of lockers available for student use.

Source:Hindustanis.org