CSU - Department of Music - About Us

The University Center for the Arts provides a forum in which the finest artists, performers, professors and students in our community can collaborate and actively incorporate the arts as a cornerstone of learning at Colorado State University.”

– Larry Edward Penley, President - Colorado State University

University Center for the Arts

The University Center for the Arts (UCA), located in the renovated Fort Collins High School at 1400 Remington Street, is a state-of-the-art performing arts center.

The UCA houses the 550-seat Edna Rizley Griffin Concert Hall; the Bohemian Complex with a 317-seat thrust theatre and an experimental theatre; the William E. Runyan Music Hall, which houses both choral and music rehearsals; and ancillary theater spaces, including a paint and scene shop and dressing and green rooms. The UCA, a vibrant learning environment and showcase for the performing and creative arts, provides the opportunity for dynamic community-university collaborations and programs that will bring to Colorado State, Fort Collins, and the region a new dimension of cultural enrichment and economic benefit.

Additional performing and visual arts facilities are under construction. The final and largest phase of the project is underway and the completed UCA will include an art gallery, exhibition space for the university's permanent art collections, a historic costume and textile gallery, dance studios, recital and rehearsal chambers, and classrooms to enable students and members of our community to learn about and benefit from the arts. In addition, the center will provide clinic space for the Music Therapy program and the Center for Biomedical Research in Music. Having an environment that will bring the University’s performing and visual arts programs together will open doors to entirely new avenues in learning and creative expression. The entire project is expected to be completed in 2008.

When complete, the UCA will bring performing and visual artists together in one place and provide them with the spaces, facilities, and tools they need to learn, teach, create, collaborate, display, perform, and excel. The UCA will improve opportunities for integrated and interdisciplinary learning by housing the academic units of Music, Theatre, and Dance in the same home for the first time in university history. In addition, the UCA will provide a visual arts gallery and museum to accommodate modest-sized traveling exhibitions and storage and exhibition space for at least a portion of the university’s permanent collection (about 1,700 individual pieces).

Edna Rizley Griffin Concert Hall

The 550-seat concert hall includes some of the most advanced acoustical design features in the region, including articulated walls, ceiling clouds and raked seating designed to provide the highest quality sound. The facility was named in honor of Edna Rizley Griffin, a longtime advocate and benefactor of the performing arts including the Fort Collins Symphony Orchestra and the Lincoln Center Concert Hall. The $2 million centerpiece gift to the University Center for the Arts was made by the Griffin Foundation. Other major donors making the construction of the Concert Hall possible include the Bohemian Foundation, Serimus Foundation, Monfort Family Foundation, Adolph Coors Foundation, Boettcher Foundation, Gates Family Foundation and Bob and Joyce Everitt.

William E. Runyan Music Hall

The Runyan Music Hall is a flexible space equiped with a SMART computer screen system, and sound and lighting equipment. The room is used for a variety of purposes ranging from classes, rehearsal space, intimate concerts and departmental receptions.

Music Building

At this time the Music program facilities are located in the Music Building, located on the west side of the tree-lined oval in the historical heart of campus and with easy access to the Lory Student Center and Morgan Library. The music building holds two classrooms, a technology lab, a music composition lab, one large lecture hall, one large rehearsal room, and the Casavant Recital Hall. Most faculty and grad student offices are still located in the Music Building and Ammons Hall, where applied lessons are held. In total, there are 23 practice rooms available including dedicated rooms for piano, harp, organ and percussion.

- Casavant Concert Hall -

Many performances are held in the Music Building’s Casavant Concert Hall, which houses the University’s world-famous Casavant Freres Organ which was installed at the university in 1968. As the first mechanical-action (tracker) organ built at an American university, the Casavant was constructed in a style adhering to the 17th- and 18th -century North German organ-building principles. It was built by Lawrence I. Phelps, known as one of the world's great organ builders, and was specifically designed for the Colorado State Concert Hall. The organ, valued at more than $750,000, includes 2,079 pipes, a 56-note keyboard, a 32-note pedalboard and 34 stops. The sweep of the organ's pipes fill the entire north wall of the hall - the tallest pipes reach 19 feet. The design and quality of the Casavant organ has earned Colorado State an international reputation as the keeper of one of the finest organs built in the 20th century.

Music Technology Lab

The Technology Lab is divided into three areas – a keyboard lab, a computer lab, and a listening area. The Keyboard lab is equipped with 17 Yahama CLP-679 electric pianos, each with a PC, loaded with Finale 2007 and Sibelius 4 notation programs. The keyboards may be individually monitored by an instructor. The computer lab is equipped with 12 computers, and a variety of software, including notation programs Finale and Sibelius, notation/performance software Band in a Box, recording editing and assembly software, Cakewalk, SoundForge, ProAudio, ProTools, Sonar Home Studio 4, Cubase, Goldwave, Multiquence, Ear training software Auralia and Ear Training Expedition, and notation recognition software SmartScore and SharpEye. The listening area also has three computers, with Finale and Sibelius, which can also serve as listening stations. The area also includes carrels for listening to LP’s, cassettes, and CD’s. The area is also equipped with a TV and VCR/DVD players. The audio collection includes some 5000 CD recordings, and 7000 LP’s. This area also holds archived collections of Faculty and University Ensembles, ranging in format from reel-to-reel, DAT, and CD’s.

Music Composition Lab

The music composition lab is a state of the art facility designed to facilitate development of our future plans of a thriving composition program at CSU. The core of the system is based on the industry-standard Gigastudio platform, similar to what the majority of professional composers now use in their studios. The Gigastudio platform provides dynamic multisampling of all instruments—that is, actual recordings of instruments playing every single note, articulation, dynamic level, etc. These samples are "triggered" by any standard notation software (Sibelius, Finale, etc.) or sequencer program. What this does is provide the most realistic playback possible for students and professionals alike, rivaling that of an actual performance. The advantages to student composers are many—most specifically, the samples provide students with timbre and articulation characteristics of each instrument in different ranges, which is always a difficult concept for student composers to grasp, since most do not have access to an ensemble to study these characteristics. While there is no substitute for a live ensemble, this lab will give students the next best alternative, while also training them for professional composition careers on industry standard technology.

Ammons Hall

The music therapy program facilities are located to the north of the Music Building in Ammons Hall. They include music therapy faculty offices, one lecture classroom, a music therapy resource room, and a vast collection of AMTA materials and literature.

Location and Parking

The Music Building and Ammons Hall are located on Oval Drive, the heart of the CSU campus. Free Event Parking is available after 5:00 p.m. around the Oval and behind the Music Building.