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Manchester is
breaking ground
again – this time on
a new Recital Hall
Community
invited to join March 30 celebration
NORTH MANCHESTER,
Ind. – A new Recital Hall will greet Manchester College’s students,
faculty and audiences next fall and neighbors and friends are invited to
help get the construction under way. Accompanied by an A Cappella Choir
freshly returned from its peace tour of Italy,
the college will break ground on the Recital Hall at 3 p.m. on Tuesday,
March 30. A reception in the old recital hall will follow the brief
ceremony.
The $1.2 million
project on the north end of Otho Winger Hall is expected to take just
five months, culminating in a hall that will enhance student
performances as well as audiences’ experiences.
“It’s going to lift
up the fine arts for Manchester College,” said Manchester’s Director of
Development Mary A. Chrastil, who is the staff shepherd for the Recital
Hall Committee.
The Recital Hall will
put a striking new facility – a new look – on the center of campus. In
addition to a renovated stage, new acoustics, lighting and seating for
172 guests, Winger will get an East Street lobby opposite the College
Union. Full accessibility and new, close-at-hand restrooms also are
designed into the construction.
Meanwhile,
construction is well under way on a $17 million Science Center just
across the mall from the Recital Hall.
Manchester
will not go into debt or raise tuition to pay for either structure.
“Generous donors are enabling the College to break ground with
construction funds in hand,” said Chrastil.
Fund-raising
continues, however, to equip the Recital Hall and to provide endowed
fine arts programs to ensure
Manchester
and its students get maximum benefits from the renovations.
The Recital Hall
reconstruction in Otho Winger Hall is long overdue. Fifty-two years
later, the Recital Hall still looks like the classroom it was
constructed to be, with a wall-long blackboard, tile floor and cement
block walls. But not for long.
“The audience will
find it 100 percent different,” said Trustee Carolyn Moldenhauer ’61
Hardman, chair of the Recital Hall Committee. A soprano, she performed
in the recital hall as a student. “It’s going to be warm,” she said of
the forthcoming audience experience. “It’s going to be welcoming. It
will be uplifting.”
Architect for the
2,720-square-foot renovation and 3,650-square-foot new construction for
the Recital Hall is The Odle, McGuire & Shook Corp. of Indianapolis.
General contractor is CME Corp. of Fort Wayne.
For an A Cappella
Choir that has performed in Carnegie Hall and is lifting its collective
voice this spring in the towering cathedrals of Italy, the renovations
cannot come too soon. The pianists and jazz ensembles and other
instrumentalists are eager to perform within an acoustically “tunable”
hall. “I’m excited!” said clarinetist Jennifer E. Hann, a sophomore
music education major from Peru, Ind. “The sound will be so much better
for my senior recital.” Hann currently is in Italy with the A Cappella
Choir and will return just in time to sing for the Recital Hall
groundbreaking.
The Recital Hall is
not just for music majors and minors. Manchester is a liberal arts
college and a Church of the Brethren college, so music is an integral
element of campus life.
“This is a
centerpiece of everything we do – the arts,” said college President
Parker G. Marden.
Every MC student must
complete coursework in experiencing the fine arts, and students of all
disciplines (from peace studies to biology-chemistry to education)
participate in concert choirs and orchestras and ensembles to expand
their college experience.
“The Recital Hall
renovation is one more growth indicator for the Music Department, and
will be a tremendous asset for recruiting,” said Music Department chair,
Dr. Deborah E. DeWitt. “New students will be able to take a tour of
Winger, culminating in that new Recital Hall, and will see that
excitement and growth first-hand.” |
