Rice University - Alice Pratt Brown Hall
The $22 million facility is home to Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. The grand foyer invites audiences to enter some of the finest performance spaces in the city. Its Stude Concert Hall, Duncan Recital Hall, and Edythe Bates Old Recital Hall enjoy outstanding acoustics and attract audiences of more than 70,000 music lovers each year. Farther inside the building, long hallways of practice and chamber music rooms, recording studios, and faculty studios resonate with energy. Alice Pratt Brown Hall provides a breathtakingly beautiful home for the Shepherd School. Designed by the internationally celebrated Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill, the $17.5 million building was named in recognition of a major challenge grant from the Brown Foundation. The facility includes a 1,000-seat concert hall, a 250-seat recital hall, the Edythe Bates Old Grand Organ and Recital Hall, an opera studio, 65 practice rooms, seven classrooms, rehearsal and small ensemble spaces, and 54 teaching studios. Sited near the western edge of the Rice campus, it consists of two long, low, parallel wings joined by gardens and connecting corridors of loggias. Many traditional and architectural elements of the building compliment and enhance the campus. The building serves not only the needs of the Shepherd School and Rice University, but also of the active performing arts community in Houston. Approximately 75,000 visitors attend 350 events per year at the Shepherd School.
