Renovations make Eastman Community Music School more music-friendly

If you used the word “cubicle” to describe the studio rooms under renovation at the Eastman Community Music School, you’d be wrong.

That’s because the walls are not set at right angles to form squares. And that’s on purpose.

“We always have a zig or a zag, being cognizant of the acoustics,” said Jennifer Baldwin, project manager of the $2.8 million renovation of the community school. ECMS is the part of Eastman School of Music that caters to community musicians, from preschoolers to secondary students contemplating higher education in music to senior citizens coming back to their love of music.

The renovation comes 13 years after Eastman took over the building at 10 Gibbs St., and renamed it Messinger Hall. The building formerly housed a stringed instrument shop, law offices, and other businesses before and during its use as a community music school. Peter Kodzas, associate dean of ECMS, said the school wasn’t using the building to its full potential: to avoid sound overlap during lessons or practicing, the occupants had to leave one empty room between every two rooms with music being made in them.

“It was super wasteful of time and space,” he said. Now, after other projects such as the building of Hatch Hall, repairs to Kodak Hall and renovation of Kilbourn Hall, it’s time to make Messinger more music friendly. Renovations began in December and are expected to be complete when the school year begins again in September.

Besides the zigging and zagging walls, other special accommodations include air between layers of the flooring in the percussion classroom to trap vibrations. Electrical outlets are never back to back on interior walls to avoid creating a sound conduit, Baldwin pointed out. Interior walls are made with four layers of drywall and other materials to dampen sound. Doors are thicker than usual and include a padded layer to absorb sound. Even the ventilation system is specially tailored to avoid transferring sound from one room to the next.

None of that, of course, will be easy to notice once the building is complete. What people will be able to see is the new waiting room for parents and students on the third floor of the building and a refreshed classroom on the first floor that is visible to passersby on the corner of Gibbs Street and East Avenue.

An open house ECMS plans to hold on June 3 will share some of the renovation plans with prospective and returning students and parents, but the actual unveiling will have to wait until classes begin again next semester.

The renovation really brings the building up to modern standards for practice rooms and classrooms. Kodzas, who earned his doctorate at Eastman, said he recalls practicing in parts of the school built in 1921 and being able to hear quite a bit of noise from other rooms when he stopped playing his music.

Baldwin said the construction technology of the era in which the original school was built amounted to using fortress-like masonry walls between classrooms and unusually thick wooden doors.

While home to the Eastman Community School, Messinger Hall will be used by collegiate students when available—generally weekdays before high schools and elementary schools are let out for the day. But Eastman School will also get back more of its classrooms that had been used by the community school. During construction some community school classes are being taught in the Quaker Meeting House on Scio Street, a couple of blocks away. The community school’s office has temporarily squeezed into a communications office on the second floor.

Now that parents will be able to wait together in a central area and classes will be clustered, Kodzas said families connected to the school will be able to connect with each other.

“You know your neighbor takes lessons, but you never see them,” he said

“The feeling of community is going to change drastically.”

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