Resources and Facilities

Morrison Hall

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.

McEnerney Hall, 1750 Arch Street, Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT)

A beautiful Spanish-style house on residential Arch Street – across the street from the northeastern perimeter of the campus – is home to the Center for New Music and Audio Technology (CNMAT), founded in 1989 by composer Professor Richard Felciano. At CNMAT one finds a unique venue for research and teaching on the application of computer and related technologies to music, concerts of contemporary music, public lectures by internationally renowned new music composers, and workshops and seminars by famous scholars and researchers. The garden of 1750 Arch Street is also the site of delightful socio-academic events such as the department’s barbeque to celebrate the beginning of a new academic year.

About CNMAT
CNMAT website
CNMAT as a performance space

Hertz Hall

Also opened in 1958 and connected to Morrison Hall by an archway and plaza, Hertz Hall of Music is one of the best concert spaces in the State of California. Seating 678, this performance space permits us to house our Noon Concert Series and a full roster of evening and weekend concerts by superb student ensembles. Cal Performances (the outreach performance unit on campus) also presents professional recitals here. It is named for longtime conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Alfred Hertz, who contributed funds for its construction.

Bustling from morning into the night, Hertz Hall also constitutes our rehearsal space. As such it is home to the University Symphony Orchestra, the University Chorus, the African Music Ensemble. In addition, its ample seating permits us to offer popular lecture courses for the general student population – Music 27 Introduction to Western Music and Music 26 Music in American Music Culture.

Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library

Spurred by the Department of Music, made possible by a gift from Music alum Jean Gray Hargrove, Class of 1932, and many other generous donors, the

new music librarymoved from Morrison Hall to a new building immediately adjacent to Morrison and Hertz Halls in 2004, becoming the first free-standing branch library in the University Library system. One of the finest music research collections in the world, the library welcomes to its offerings local citizens and internationally-famous scholars, as well as the campus community.

Sather Tower (The Campanile)

High above the ground, you can see suspended from the roof of Sather Tower the sixty-one bells that constitute the Berkeley Carillon. Inside the Tower at the top are the office and practice instrument of the Department of Music’s University Carillonist Jeff Davis, and on the bottom floors a carillon archive and additional practice instrument.

Designed by John Galen Howard in 1911, initially with a chime of twelve bells played for the first time in 1917, the set became a full concert carillon when the Class of 1928 presented thirty-six more bells for its 50th anniversary gift to the campus. It was topped off at the capacity of the tower in 1983 with an additional thirteen bells donated by Evelyn and Jerry Chambers. The keyboard from which the bells are sounded can be seen in the glass-in cabinet at the top.