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The Music Center at Strathmore makes a grand entrance into the DC metropolitan area.

By Anne Vazquez

If music soothes the soul, then the Music Center at Strathmore fulfills its purpose. Conceived in 1996 as a public-private partnership, this state-of-the-art facility operated by Strathmore Hall Foundation, Inc. features a 1,976-seat concert hall and an education center for budding performing artists.

Located in North Bethesda, MD just outside Washington, DC, the Music Center is the second home for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) and also a home to Strathmore presentations. There are also five resident partner organizations: Levine School of Music, National Philharmonic, Washington Performing Arts Society, CityDance Ensemble, and Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras. As a result, the facility offers a smorgasbord of musical events for the million residents of Montgomery County as well as many visitors.

That is not to say that the area was lacking musical culture before the Music Center opened on February 5, 2005. Just across the lawn of the 11-acre site where the facility stands is the Mansion at Strathmore, a 100-year-old Georgian Style structure, which has served as the county’s center for the arts since 1983.

Serendipity

Constructing the Music Center on a grand scale was quite an undertaking, but securing capital funding from partners early on allowed the project to come to fruition. “Since 1985, it had been the wish of our president and CEO, Eliot Pfanstiehl, to have a larger performing facility than one with 100 seats [in the mansion],” says Mark Grabowski, executive vice president of operations at Strathmore. (Grabowski originally joined the project as a consultant in 1999.) That wish was granted one afternoon in 1996 when “Strathmore had contracted with the BSO to perform a free concert on our front lawn,” Grabowski explains. “Both organizations’ presidents—John Gidwitz, then president of the BSO and Eliot Pfanstiehl—started talking, and both had a desire to establish a musical presence in Montgomery County.”

“Early on, the BSO partnered with Strathmore Foundation and committed to make this its second home,” says Clifford Gayley, AIA, associate principal of William Rawn Associates, Architects, Inc. in Boston, MA, the firm in charge of the project. “That was an important anchor for a facility like this.”

Grabowski adds, “That decision was made at the very beginning, even before we sat down to put a plan on paper. Because the BSO is recognized as a State of Maryland asset, it enabled us to approach the state legislature for more capital funding.”

From there, the wheels were in motion. Montgomery County, the State of Maryland, and Strathmore Hall Foundation—along with corporate and individual donors—co-funded the project. Design commenced in June 1999 as William Rawn Associates Architects, Inc. along with associate architect Grimm + Parker Architects of Bethesda, MD were hired to design what was to be a centerpiece for the county’s cultural landscape.

Plans for the Music Center included an education center providing rehearsal space and practice rooms for the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras, City Dance, and the Levine School of Music. The 30,000 square foot education wing features four rehearsal spaces, including a dance studio with a sprung floor and two rehearsal rooms with 40' high ceilings. The wing also contains a children’s music classroom, an electronic music lab, a small two-story rehearsal room, and nine solo and small group practice spaces.

The education wing was integral to the concept of the Music Center at Strathmore. “From the very start, this project was about both [the concert hall and the education],” recalls Gayley. “It was not about a concert hall with something else grafted on. The relationship between these two uses was important, not only in terms of back of house adjacencies that would allow for efficiency but also from a front of house perspective. Both the concert hall and the education wing have their front doors on the promenade. You come in the lobby and look right, and you see the education wing; you look left, and you can head to the concert hall. There’s a sense that they really are part of one structure.

“Eliot Pfanstiehl has spoken glowingly about the opportunities implicit in this juxtaposition for world class performers to stroll through the west-facing promenade and visit kids who are learning the craft,” Gayley continues. “So, from a design point of view, the two were there from the start.”

Treading Lightly On The Site

The site itself played a part in the design process. “The site is very special,” says Gayley. “This gem of a mansion sits on a hill along Rockville Pike, which is a highly commercial strip. The Music Center, in its park setting, is a respite from the commercial activity along the Pike.”

The design of the building itself took into account the pastoral quality and sloping characteristic of the Strathmore property. “There was a desire to preserve the green space,” explains Gayley. “Also, the facility, at nearly 200,000 square feet, would dwarf not only the mansion but the hill that it sits on if it were to sit on top of the hill. So the decision was to take advantage of the site, which slopes away from the mansion, and push the concert hall downhill and into the earth.

“The undulating roof line links the building into a single whole, while acknowledging there are two parts of the building,” continues Gayley. “The larger S-curve on the left hand side is the expression of the volume of the concert hall, and the smaller curve on the right is over the tall rehearsal spaces at the top of the education wing.”

The 64' high glass curtainwall fronting the north lobby hints at the concert hall height. The promenade, another expressive architectural feature, links the concert hall area and the education wing. Additionally, the open expanse of glass not only allows natural light to flood into the facility on three floor levels, but also overlooks the Strathmore site. The curtainwall is framed by a German limestone facade.

The Main Event

While the concert hall and education wing were both integral to the design of Music Center, the concert hall represents the passion for performance inherent in the project. Seating layout, interior furnishings, and acoustic precision converged to create a world-class venue.

Featuring orchestra, promenade, grand tier, and upper tier seating levels, the audience and chorus seats wrap the concert platform to embrace the stage and connect to side galleries and balconies.

“Concert halls in general vary both by shape and size,” explains Gayley. “This hall is a modified shoebox shape, as opposed to a fan shape where everyone has a similar view of the stage but only sees the backs of fellow audience members. Here, the audience not only faces the stage but faces one another from the side balconies and from behind the stage. We designed this to be a facility where the musicians and audience were in the same space, so there’s a sense of intimacy. For a concert hall of 2,000 people, achieving that sense of intimacy was a real challenge; to experience it is quite joyful.”

The materials used to furnish the concert hall match the ambitions of the design. There are maple and red birch wood floors, custom red birch paneling, bronze architectural mesh wall panels, alabaster art glass light fixtures, and seats of maple wood and aubergine velour.

Grabowski explains, “Our landlord, Montgomery County, MD, selected a general contractor, Clark Construction Group, LLC, who was responsible for all capital purchases—the architect, the acoustician, and the designers did all the specifications—but the general contractor did the actual bidding and purchasing for the actual structure. As its commitment to the project, Strathmore Foundation funded furniture, fixture, and equipment purchases of $5 million. We purchased the office furniture, the box seats in the concert hall, the sound system—anything that was ‘movable,’ I took care of that aspect.”

For other items for which no specs were provided, Grabowski made the decisions. For instance, he led procurement for furnishings for the administrative offices and other back of house locations.

About 60% of the Strathmore Foundation staff moved their offices to the new facility, occupying 4,500 square feet. The rest of the staff continues to work in the mansion. Additionally, the resident partner organizations maintain offices in the Music Center.

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