On May 8 and 9, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) dedicated the staggeringly beautiful and realistically forward-looking $53 million Conrad Prebys Music Center. Concerts designed to demonstrate the 400-seat Performance Hall (the work of acoustician Cyril M. Harris, who also designed the acoustically excellent auditorium at the Neurosciences Institute) was held the evening of May 8. On May 9, the public was welcomed for tours and free recitals, and the May 8 concert was repeated in the evening. To hear Department of Music Chair Rand Steiger tell of the process of bringing the department’s long-held dreams to fruition, as he did during a tour prior to the dedication ceremony, is to know how deeply invested he is in the facility. The music department was founded more than 40 years ago, and has never had facilities sufficient to its burgeoning needs. It took 20 years of ardent personal advocacy as well as the support of many to bring department hopes to reality. When finally approved, state funds proved inadequate due to the inflation of construction costs, and UCSD officials turned to philanthropists for support. In 2007 Prebys, a successful real estate builder, stepped forward with $6 million. Former UC Regent John Moores contributed $1 million, encouraging others to give substantial gifts as well. A year later Prebys later gave an additional $3 million to provide funds for an endowment for maintenance of the center’s state-of-the-art accouterments and to fund graduate fellowships. The 47,000-square-foot Conrad Prebys Music Center is built of cast-in-place concrete. Facilities also include a small theater with electronic virtual acoustics (dial up your desired liveliness), a 150-seat lecture/recital hall, and rehearsal rooms for chamber, choral, orchestral and percussion music. In addition to numerous student practice rooms, there is also a state-of-the-art recording studio with two performer/performance group spaces. Stage and recording studio floors and walls frequently utilize bamboo wood for acoustic purposes. The arts centerpiece and a bridge to the extended music community, Harris’ astonishing and asymmetrical Conrad Prebys Concert Hall is not only beautiful, with non-parallel bamboo wood and concrete ceiling and wall facets, but provides a nearly indescribable, almost discomfiting, listening environment, in which one realizes that heretofore one has never heard music so fully. The complete range of the audible is given full voice. Plans are in place for a chamber music series as well as other entertainment opportunities including jazz, classical, new, and experimental and computer music. To design a music center befitting its innovative programs, UCSD Department of Music (founded in 1966) engaged Seattle’s LMN Architects and acoustician Harris, who have collaborated in designing concert halls for more than 20 years. Among their projects is Benaroya Hall. Dean of Arts and Humanities Seth Lerer said, “Harris, long a leader on the edge of sound, melds science and design. It is the soundtrack for our times and music is our own embassy of art.” “This is a very sweet day in the 42nd year of our existence,” Steiger said. “We now have a concert hall that gives us the tools for invention.” Prebys addressed his personal history, which included times of privation, then said deprecatingly of his success, “I always thought of myself as the luckiest guy in the world. Today, I’m one of the happiest.” To learn more go to http://music.ucsd.edu.