Instruction

The Conservatory of Music’s main teaching building has 40 studios and 10 classrooms. Private instruction, ensemble coaching, and classroom instruction take place here. The building also houses offices of faculty members and the conservatory deans, in addition to studios for TIMARA (Technology in Music and the Related Arts). Minoru Yamasaki designed Bibbins Hall in 1963 in a style that closely resembles his later design of the former World Trade Center in New York City.

Jazz students and faculty have joined their classical counterparts in the new Bertram and Judith Kohl Building that opened in spring 2010. The building features a third-story, glass-walled, cantilevered section that reaches across to the main conservatory complex. The building has flexible rehearsal and performance spaces, teaching studios, practice rooms, music archive and exhibits, instrument storage, a lobby, and a world-class recording studio. In addition to jazz studies, the facility houses the music history and music theory departments. The building has received a gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, making it one of the few, or perhaps, only, music conservatories in the world with this distinction.

The Hales Jazz Facility is part of the Hales Gymnasium complex that includes a traditional gym with a basketball court. The jazz facility has practice rooms for students who like to get together to improvise and rehearse jazz and contemporary music.