An alumnus has pledged to donate $10 million to build a new center and recording studio for music students.
Music executive Mo Ostin’s contribution is enough to fund half of the new Evelyn and Mo Ostin Music Center, which will be built behind Schoenberg Hall, said Christopher Waterman, dean of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture.
The rest of the funding will come from additional fundraising, Waterman said.
The new center will include two buildings tailored to members of the Herb Alpert School of Music, which was established in 2007. The school offers new programs and classes that reflect UCLA’s place in Los Angeles’ movement toward globalization in music, but the building that houses it now, Schoenberg Hall, is technologically outdated, Waterman said.
In addition to faculty offices, one of the new buildings will also hold a rehearsal space that can be used for concerts and a coffeehouse.
The second building will house a recording studio students can use.
The coffee shop will give students a place to gather, and there will be a bandstand where they can perform, said Tim Rice, the director of the Herb Alpert School of Music.
“It will allow us to have a little place that’s good for socializing during the day,” Rice said. “Students are always looking for places to perform.”
The recording studio, meanwhile, will allow students to use state-of-the-art technology both to record their own music and develop other skills, Waterman said.
Students said the current facilities need to be updated, and that this is a good step toward that.
“We could definitely use a new recording studio,” said fourth-year composition student Ethan Braun. “Ours is a joke.”
The university hopes to begin construction by summer 2012 and complete the project by fall 2014, said Shilo Munk, a spokeswoman for the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture.