Long waits, headaches for recital registration

The Musical Arts Center, Auer Hall, Ford-Crawford Hall and Recital Hall are home to many performances for Jacobs School of Music students, faculty and guest artists.

But with more than 1,100 performances annually, some believe the school is just running out of space.

“The music school is definitely a bit cramped,” said freshman percussion major Ben Rigney. “For recitals, some students will literally camp outside the recital registration office in order to get the time they want in the room they want.” 

Each music school major has to do a solo recital before they graduate, but some students are required to do them both their junior and senior years.

The four different performance spaces are able to hold approximately 2,500 people combined. However, only three of the four performance spaces are used for student recitals, which often results in scheduling challenges.

“People have a lot of trouble scheduling their recitals,” freshman viola major Susanna Johnson said. “If someone has a recital at 10 o’clock on a Friday night no one is going to go to that, so everyone tries to schedule really early.”

When scheduling performances, the School of Music factors in many circumstances to determine who gets to use which space when.

Seniority, degrees and a first-come, first-served basis are all taken into consideration when organizing the performance’s schedules, Eugene O’Brien, executive associate dean of the school of music, said.

“All of the different types of performances have different levels of priority and specific dates for when they have to happen,” O’Brien said.

One of the obstacles the Jacobs School of Music faces is that all of the performance spaces are used frequently.

“No matter how many performance spaces we have, they will fill up. If we built five new recital halls I think that they would still be full,” O’Brien said. “The spaces are just really heavily used.”