What’s not to love about a gorgeous new concert hall? And how can we get more people to experience its excellence? Those are among the enviable questions that faced the music faculty at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), following the opening of the acclaimed 400-seat Conrad Prebys Concert Hall in May 2009. The answer was to inaugurate a new, broad-ranging and eclectic series called Wednesdays@7. Among the initial season’s most exciting events was the December 2009 world premiere of Anthony Davis and Allan Havis’s long-awaited opera, “Lilith.” Once UCSD teacher and pianist Aleck Karis had welcomed new graduate students to the music department in mid-September last year, he and his fellow concert committee members — Susan Narucki, Rand Steiger, Steven Schick and Davis — turned their attention to programming the 11-concert second season of Wednesdays@7, which begins Oct. 6. “I think the programs, featuring faculty and distinguished guests, reflect the eclectic interests and questing energy of our department,” Karis said. “We hope that the earlier time will encourage more students and members of the campus community to stay on campus for these events, and of course we want to share this exciting [and often unfamiliar] music with the broader San Diego community.” The Oct. 6 concert features Karis and cellist Charles Curtis in something termed “provocative and rare” by publicist Dirk Sutro, a performance of Morton Feldman’s circa 80-minute “Patterns in a Chromatic Field.” According to Karis, he and Curtis took their time initially learning the infamously difficult work, which they subsequently performed many times in the U.S. and Europe, and then recorded for Tzadik Records in 2004. Karis admitted that even after all this time, the piece is still extremely challenging. “Above all,” he said, “in the concentration required to sustain 70 minutes of very intense music. Some of the purely technical difficulties have melted away, which leaves more time and energy to work on issues like balance and color.” At first, Feldman’s quirky notation of both rhythm and pitch took some getting used to, but by now it feels almost normal. Karis feels that Prebys Hall, with its warm and immediate acoustic, is a perfect place in which to experience this wondrous work, written in 1981. Those who attended last May’s inaugural concerts and subsequent programming attest to the superiority of Cyril Harris’s acoustical design and the beauty of LMN Architects’ asymmetrically designed hall. As a huge bonus, one may park right across the street in the superb Gilman parking structure. Additional Wednesdays@7 concerts are scheduled as follows: flutist/composer James Newton, Oct. 20; percussionist Steven Schick, Nov. 3; Palimpsest 1/new music, with conductor Rand Steiger, Nov. 17; Wet Ink Music new music collective, Jan, 12; Aleck Karis, Jan. 26; Palimpsest 2/new music, Feb. 8; sitar virtuoso Kartik Seshadri, March 9; and Formalist Quartet, April 13. For additional information and a complete list of all concerts in UCSD’s additional department of music series, including ticket prices, dates and times, visit http://musicweb.ucsd.edu/concerts/.