The music students' eyes widened and their mouths turned into tiny O's as they peered at the velvet-covered walls and crystal punch bowl in the Ida Smith Clark Green Room at the newly remodeled David P. Gardner Hall at the University of Utah.
"Wow, this is incredible!" said David Crane, U. piano performance major.Originally built in the 1930s as the student union building, the newly renovated Gardner Hall has seen a lot of changes through the years.
"This is where the student government was, where the ballroom was, and with the ballroom where the junior proms and senior proms were held," said Ed Thompson, chairman of the U. department of music. "The cafeteria was here. (And) this was the public student lobby."
In the 1950s, the ballet and music departments moved into the building, sharing the basement with KUED Channel 7.
"The TV and the music department are two diametrically opposed functions," said Thompson. "In the downstairs we'd have people who were trying to make a television production and they could hear the orchestra playing. They couldn't co-exist."
Finally, in the 1980s the Eccles Foundation broadcast center was built, so KUED was moved there.
"The music department eventually had full ownership of the building, but we didn't have concert space. The building also didn't meet earthquake standards, and it had all kinds of other issues," said Thompson. "In the early '90s, the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation made a gift of $6 million. That gave the impetus for starting the renovation, and then the Legislature gave an additional $14 million to support it."
Evidence of the donation stands in steel and concrete, supporting the new classrooms and beautiful concert halls.
Take, for example, the Green Room.
"In the arts," said Thompson, "there is always a 'green room,' although no one knows where the tradition of a 'green room' came from."
He looked around at the hunter-green velvet wallpaper and rich furnishings decorating the room.
"This is where students will come to collect their thoughts, practice, warm up. And after the performance, it's set up to have a reception and celebrate this milestone in their lives."
Thompson walked down the hallway to the new Dumke Recital Hall. The white sycamore stage reverberated with the tones of a lesson being taught on a new Hamburg Steinway piano.
"This recital hall seats 115 people," he said. "So often, students recitals are conducted in concert halls so large that it looks like only a few people came. This is designed for smaller audiences. It will also be used for jury examinations and probably also master class."
The only part of the building left standing after contractors had gutted the rest for renovation is the old ballroom, said Thompson.
"Now it's the chamber music hall," he said. "This is where all the student dances used to take place. This was kept the same, except they did move some of the walls of the room in, to make it smaller."
He looked around at the ornate molding and plaster relief on the walls and ceiling.
"And Daniel Peterson recovered the accents on the ceiling and walls with gold and palladium."
Thompson walked down the stairs and toward the Emma Ray Rigs Music Library.
"This is the first time we've ever had a music library," he said. "You can see here that we have an amazing collection."
April Greenan, the librarian, agreed.
"Before this was built, there wasn't a library," she said. "There was something they called a listening lab. Now there are more than 100,000 recordings and scores. We have computer equipment here with synthesizers where kids can compose with midi interface. Organizing the library is still in process."
She walked over to an old Victrola phonograph player and turned the crank. Crackling music poured out of its wooden cabinet.
"The phonographs are part of the archive," she said. This one was created right around 1900. And it takes no electricity, you just turn the crank. When I first found this one, it had been sitting in storage. I couldn't find the crank, but I put a record on anyway and somehow music came it out. It was like a voice from the past."
In addition, Greenan said, the library also features recorded wax cylinders.
"These are priceless," she said. "Some are still in their original containers. These would have been recorded from about 1897, some of them even in the late 1880s -- we've actually got some that are that old!"
Greenan turned and opened the door to a closet-size room containing shelves of piano rolls.
"Right at the turn of the century, all of the great pianists made these piano rolls of their work," she explained. "We can hear Ravel playing Ravel, and Rachmaninoff playing Faure and Debussy. Within the past year, somebody has figured out how to digitize these. This is especially valuable for our piano students; they can then hear how Rachmaninoff would have rolled that chord and gather the articulation and the technique from the paper."
Another Gardner Hall feature is the Maurice Abravanel Studio.
"We're recreating his studio in here," said Thompson. "The Abravanel family has given his Steinway, his desk, his furniture and the scores that he had worked with and marked on for performance. His desk still has the ring stains from the cups. Students can be in his studio, hold his scores and play on his piano."
Thompson thoughtfully looked through the glass wall from the library to the atrium. Students walked on the staircases and through the area to the newly built portion of the building, where the new concert hall awaits final phases of completion.
"The crown jewel of this whole project is the Libby Gardner Concert Hall," he said. "There's nothing like it on the Wasatch Front. We have small and large halls, but medium-range is hard to find. The auditorium will seat 680 people. We plan to keep it busy with university events, as well as serious professional artists.
"The Eccles Foundation desired to have an organ in the concert hall, so they made an additional donation of $850,000 to put an organ in there. We examined over 30 builders, and we think we got one of the best in the world."
In addition to the renovation and new construction, a $1.5 million gift from Bruce W. Bastian was provided to make the University of Utah an all-Steinway school.
"We will now be the only all-Steinway school in the Intermountain West," said Thompson. "And one of the few in the country. What that means is that all of the performance pianos, faculty pianos, and practice will be Steinway pianos. The performance pianos will be Hamburg Steinways, which are the premier of the Steinways. Retail, they sell for about $135,000. So it's kind of like Christmas around here."