The famed Juilliard School of Music in Lincoln Center (New York City) has completed a major renovation. It now features 45,000 square feet of new facilities and 50,000 square feet of renovated spaces—many of which were turned “inside out” so that the hustle and bustle inside the school can be seen by pedestrians outside. According to system installers Altel Systems’ (Brewster, N.Y.) president/CEO, Andy Musci, this two-step process was “originally a bid project and we were awarded the initial job four years ago where we worked with Turner Construction to fully fit out Alice Tully Hall with both a Performance Sound System and a Cinema Sound System. Although housed in the same building, Tully Hall is managed separately by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Juilliard is a separate and distinct entity.
“Altel also provided a substantial amount of the initial work in the other facilities in the building such as the Black Box Theater, so the infrastructure got handled during that first phase of the work. Then there was a secondary bid project, which came directly from the Juilliard School to outfit new gear for the main studio, rehearsal halls, music technology suites and the Black Box Theater.”
Juilliard’s longtime Recording Department director, Bob Taibbi, a 38-year veteran of the school, says that the department’s role is not to teach recording, but “to record the public performances that we do here at the school for archival purposes, which include orchestral performances, lectures, master classes and anything they want for the archives. With the renovation, the school was going to build a new orchestra rehearsal room, so attached to that—because I always need more space—they gave us this whole A/V suite that includes my office, two audio edit rooms, a video edit room, a control room that’s attached to the new orchestral rehearsal room and a video control room.”
Taibbi’s setup in the main control room includes a Soundcraft Phantom console, ADAM Audio monitoring systems, Millennia preamps, Aphex and Lexicon outboard gear, and Neumann, Schoeps, DPA and AKG microphones, alongside Middle Atlantic enclosures and furniture in the audio and video edit suites.
