Opened in 1958 in the southeast quadrant of the campus, Morrison Hall houses the core facilities of the Department of Music. Through its halls over 3,000 students come and go each academic year. Facing south toward Hearst Field and the Hearst Memorial Gym, or north toward Faculty Glade, the pleasant classrooms on the first floor accommodate from twelve to 52 students. A special space is reserved for the instrument collection of the Baroque Music Ensemble, and the Elkus Room, our 100-seat hall, accommodates lectures, recitals and rehearsals. The Department Office is found on the first floor as well, and the famous “Room 107” where undergraduate students find the Graduate Student Instructors for their courses and the community of graduate students find each other. On the ground floor are the practice rooms and the student lounge. The top floor houses faculty offices and, in the space vacated when the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library opened in 2004, the Indonesian gamelans, a seminar room and offices for more Department personnel.
Several spaces in Morrison Hall are slated for renovation, occasioned by the move of the library to a new building next door, the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library. Into the former Library reading room, for instance, will go a new 125-seat lecture and recital space that looks out onto the grand live oak trees at the top of Faculty Glade. A new Roxanne Andersen Ethnomusicology Room will be created on the first floor, to house our Central Javanese gamelan Khyai Udan Mas and other instruments used in ethnomusicology instruction.