Music
Facilities
The Music Department at Mason Gross School of the Arts has access to and maintains rehearsal spaces, classrooms, and public performance spaces.
All visitors can find information about Rutgers parking policies here: https://www.masongross.rutgers.edu/parking
Christ Church
5 Paterson Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Downtown New Brunswick
Christ Church is a historical Episcopal church founded in 1761 to house the growing congregation of the St. James Parish in Piscataway. It has been a strong resource to the surrounding community since the early 1740s and continues to support the New Brunswick community. The church is often used for performances by the Music Department.
Graduate House
7 Chapel Drive
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Douglass campus
Primarily used for faculty offices, studio lessons are also conducted in this space, which is a satellite location for the Music Department. This building also contains the early keyboard instrument room.
Kirkpatrick Chapel
81 Somerset Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Old Queens
The Sophia Astley Kirkpatrick Memorial Chapel is a High Victorian Gothic chapel built in 1873 and features a trio of Louis Comfort Tiffany windows. It is among Rutgers University’s oldest extant buildings and one of six buildings located on a historic section of the College Avenue campus known as Old Queens.
For rental information, contact scheduling@mgsa.rutgers.edu.
Marryott Music Building
81 George Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Douglass campus
This building is the main hub for the Music Department featuring department offices, classrooms, and a concert hall. It was designed specifically for music instruction, with massive masonry walls and doors minimizing sound leakage and a facade ornamented with a lyre and composers’ names. The building name honors Stephanie Morris Marryott, who taught at Rutgers in the 1930s, in recognition of her support.
Schare Recital Hall
This intimate space seats approximately 100 and is named after W. Robert and Leona Schare. It is located on the second floor of the Marryott Music Building and is the primary location for student recitals. Please note this venue is not handicap accessible.
For rental information, contact scheduling@mgsa.rutgers.edu.
McKinney Hall
125 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
College Avenue campus
Named after Howard Decker McKinney, Rutgers College Class of 1913, McKinney Hall is the home of the Rutgers University Glee Club. McKinney was the first director of the Rutgers College Music Department, established in 1919. Over the years, McKinney also directed the Rutgers Musical Clubs, Glee Club, and Choir; advised the Music Club; founded the University Concert Series; and worked with several music groups at New Jersey College for Women. As a tribute to his many contributions, the Music Activities Building, which housed rehearsal halls for the glee club, band, and choir, was renamed McKinney Hall around 1960.
Mortensen Hall
85 George Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Douglass Campus
Robert E. Mortensen Hall, a glass-enclosed, nearly 24,000-square-foot facility within the Mason Gross Performing Arts Center, serves the conservatory’s Music, Dance, and Theater Departments, providing additional rehearsal and performance spaces.
The facility features the following:
- The well-equipped, 3,120-square-foot Shindell Choral Hall with adjacent choral suite for school vocal ensembles (Shindell Choral Hall)
- The Kevin Goetz Studio for Theater and Dance
- A large (2,397 square feet) public atrium
- A technology studio for sound recording and engineering
- The Presser Foundation Practice Suite for music
- Thomas A. and Elizabeth M. Renyi Gallery
- A suite of faculty and administrative offices for the Dance Department
Recording Studio
Shindell Choral Hall
The well-equipped, 3,120-square-foot Richard H. Shindell Choral Hall is housed in Robert E. Mortensen Hall, a glass-enclosed, nearly 24,000-square-foot facility within the Mason Gross Performing Arts Center on Douglass campus. The choral hall is on the first floor of Mortensen Hall and has an adjacent choral suite for school vocal ensembles.
Music Annex
81 George Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Douglass campus
Offering more than 20 practice rooms, the Music Annex is situated between Nicholas Music Center and Marryott Music Building. It serves as a satellite for the Music Department.
Nicholas Music Center
85 George Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Douglass campus
This 704-seat music hall serves as the largest performance space on campus. Designed by the distinguished architect Pietro Belluschi—whose roster of other projects includes Alice Tully Hall in New York City, the Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, and the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore—the center was built in 1981 and underwent extensive renovations in 2018.
For rental information, contact scheduling@mgsa.rutgers.edu.
Nicholas Dance Studios
As the main hub for the Dance Department, this facility features three large, airy studios fully equipped with sprung wooden floors and Marley floor covers for ballet work, with live and electronic sound equipment and digital projection.
Soma Center
The mission of the Soma Center at Mason Gross is to provide quality, motion-specific training to dance majors so that they can crosstrain, learn how to ward off common dance injuries, maintain their conditioning while recovering from injuries, and heal at a faster rate when injured. The Soma Center offers members of the Mason Gross dance community opportunities to augment and enhance their technical and artistic growth through progressive attention to principles of movement integration, body-mind awareness, and neuromuscular education in a variety of movement contexts.
Students are able to access customized athletic and wellness training with the Dance Department’s certified athletic trainer; crosstrain on cardio, balance, and free-weight equipment to improve performance; and
train in Pilates under the supervision of certified instructors—with private, duet, and quartet Pilates apparatus sessions available. They may also draw upon the Soma Center as a resource while studying kinesiology, anatomy, Laban Movement Analysis, Bartenieff Fundamentals, and yoga.
The Soma Center is also the home of the Polestar Pilates Teacher Training Program, the first evidence-based comprehensive Pilates teacher training program to be offered in higher education that meets the standards of the Pilates Method Alliance.
Performing Arts Library at Douglass Library
8 Chapel Drive
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Douglass campus
The Mabel Smith Douglass Library houses the university’s fine arts collection and features exhibition space for student and faculty work as well as for invitational exhibits.
The Blanche and Irving Laurie Music Library contains approximately 31,000 books, 46,000 scores, and 40,000 recordings, as well as an extensive spoken-word collection.
The Media Center archives more than 22,000 recordings and has playback facilities for a variety of media formats. The nearby graduate seminar room has quality playback equipment.
The Sharon A. Fordham Multimedia Lab Classroom is a joint venture between the Music Department, the Dance Department, and the Library. The lab houses 17 iMac workstations (16 for students and one for an instructor) with a wide range of hardware and software for music/video production. The Multimedia Lab Classroom is open the same hours as the Media Center and is available for public use whenever classes are not being held. Additionally, the library has created the new Fordham Commons, which houses 13 Mac Pro workstations and is available for use whenever the library building is open. It provides the same software and hardware as the computers in the lab.
Rehearsal Hall
85 George Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Douglass campus
A satellite building for the Music Department, performances take place in Room 104. This is also the location of the main ticket office for performances and events, as well as faculty offices and student practice studios.
Voorhees Chapel
5 Chapel Drive
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Douglass campus
A Georgian chapel in the Christopher Wren tradition founded in 1925 and made possible by a gift from Elizabeth Rodman Voorhees, this is the site of college ceremonies, student assemblies, weddings and religious services, musical concerts, and other programs by artists, scholars, and speakers. High arched ceilings and classical details provide excellent acoustics. The chapel also houses a German Schuke organ, installed in 1976 and one of the few in the nation.
This venue is available for rental through Douglass Residential College. Contact DRC Global for more information.
