UT Gets Funding for New Music Building

Alumni of UT-Knoxville music rejoice! The state has finally set aside funds for a new music building!

According to an article in the Knoxville News-Sentinel, "UT's capital budget for next fiscal year includes... $30 million for a new building for the UT School of Music in Knoxville...." How much it will cost in total to build a new building and where that building will be located, I don't know. Also unknown is whether the new building would incorporate all of the music department, including the offices, classrooms, and studios in the newly-renovated Alumni auditorium (I still think of it as "gym"), or just replace the dilapidated current music building.

The old building was designed and built in the early 60s, if memory serves correctly. Back then, George Devine and composer and conductor of the Knoxville Symphony David Van Vactor raised enough cane to get a building that would house an auditorium, band room, classrooms, practice rooms, offices, and a branch of UT Libraries that would be devoted specifically to musical materials. (As a matter of fact, the music library is named after George Devine and, among other things, it houses the David Van Vactor collection) The space would allow instrumental and vocal studios that were spread all over campus (many of them in old houses) to be brought together under one roof, with ample space for performance. Its design would reflect the post-modern style. And while it did this very well, some practical considerations were compromised.

In 70s, when I was in middle and high school band, I remember coming to UT for concert competitions (East Tennessee School Band and Orchestra Association). My impression then was that the building was already antiquated. It was dark, dingy, and dirty. And my impression didn't improve when I became a UT music student and had to live in it for most of the hours of my day. The practice rooms on the ground floor were grottoes in a vast cave hallway system. The only windows in the place were the two small windows in the doors on opposite ends of the main hallway. The rooms weren't very big, maybe 6 feet by 5 feet; add in a medium-sized upright piano and its bench, some kind of dried-seaweed-like acoustical absorption system, and an instrumental or vocal student and accompanist and it was downright tight.

Worse, the lighting was terrible! I think the lighting designer was going for the idea that musicians would want an ambiance similar to what they would encounter on stage. And they did a good job with the concept, for what it was worth. But the phrase "Practice how you play" has its limits. The rooms, originally, had one or two incandescent "can"-style lights. As a result, it was like you were on a darkened stage with spotlighting. They did come in later and put in standard office fluorescent fixtures, but half the time most of the bulbs were burned out, so you ended up with the same amount of illumination as in the past.

The classroom and office spaces on the succeeding floors were somewhat better. To minimize sound-reflecting glass surfaces, the windows were tall and thin and pivoted vertically in the center. They did provide adequate ambient light. On two sides of the room were the aforementioned "seaweed" acoustical treatments, and some of the rooms were actually built out of square to break up the sound.

It's amazing to me, now, to think that UT was able to develop world-famous marching and concert bands, a top-notch jazz program, and--of all things, in Tennessee!--a solid opera studio in such a space. I guess having brilliant people like Dr. W. J. Julian, Jerry Coker, and Donald Brown, on staff overcame many shortcomings in the building.

But, regardless of program or facilities, I really learned an important fact about being a musician when I came back to graduate school at UT in the early 90s: It's not where you've been, but where you're going that counts.