It’s been a tumultuous year for the Cleveland Institute of Music, dating back to a Title IX investigation into a staff member. Since then, the University Circle institution has seen a commencement speaker pull out, student petitions and protests, high-profile departures, a lawsuit and, most recently, a faculty vote of no-confidence in leadership.
“I'm not a vote counter,” said CIM President Paul Hogle.
The head of the University Circle institution is focused on moving forward with a $22 million renovation of the school’s main performance space, Kulas Hall.
“The other concerns - while real - it's more important that we worry about what this is going to mean for the training of our students, because that's what we're supposed to be focused on,” he said.
The hall, named for steel magnate Elroy Kulas, opened in 1961 and has proven increasingly difficult for students as the school’s ensembles have grown.
“The sound energy of large orchestras is just too much for it,” said architect Jonathan Kurtz. “The acoustic mission here was to find ways to maintain the intimacy that the hall has for smaller ensembles. But also transition that to a place where many more performers can get on stage and have, basically, a truer experience of what they're going to find in the real world.”
That involves untangling and redistributing air ducts, revealing a much higher ceiling, which will be adorned with adjustable acoustic panels. A mechanical system to control reverb, which hasn’t worked since the mid ‘60s, will also be replaced. The 535 cinema-style seats will be replaced by 460 elegant wood models. The wood-on-white, angular motif will be gone too.
“In principle, the great concert halls of the world are like a set of hands over a mouth,” Hogle said. “They go smoothly back from the stage to the back of the room where the sound is redistributed and returns back to the hall.”
Kulas was designed in an era when the emphasis was on spotlighting the acoustic features, according to Kurtz.
"It's got the swoops, and it's got the jogs," he said. "And it's got the filigree, and it's got the geometric patterns.”
The result looks midcentury modern but has unwanted sound “projectiles” coming at the players and the audience, he said.
That’s not what happens at comparable halls at schools such as Juilliard and the New England Conservatory of Music, which Hogle noted as competitors for students.
“As they have built and renovated magnificent, professional grade venues, CIM still has less-than-a-professional grade orchestra venue,” Hogle said. “Our students have to rehearse one way here, and then go to perform someplace else or to an audition and have to recalibrate.”
It’s something that’s been in CIM’s strategic plan from 2018.
“It takes a certain will of the entire body to want to do it,” he said. “And now is the time where we got all the planets aligned.”
Yet some might point to the past year and find that CIM’s planets are out of alignment. Hogle said he does not think that will impact fundraising for the project’s final $4 million.
“This is how I honestly feel: Who wouldn't want to work in a place, or for an organization, where all of your people that you worked and studied and supported weren't really passionate about something?” he said. “The opposite is, ‘We don't care.’ Is it a lot of fun? No, but in the end our students are getting a top-flight education.”
The project begins in May, when the heavily used Kulas Hall goes offline for 18 months. Students will still be able to rehearse and perform at venues in University Circle’s museums as well as at Playhouse Square. CIM ensembles have also been invited to perform as far away as Buffalo and Cincinnati.
“If you're an orchestral musician, the whole idea of touring, traveling, playing a quick sound rehearsal and then having to deliver a concert - that has to be taught. That has to be experienced,” Hogle said.
