UC Berkeley’s Department of Music unveiled the new Helen and Thomas Wu Performance Hall in September, following an extensive renovation that was years in the making. The reopened space includes a larger stage, new seats, and state-of-the-art sound, lighting, and digital technology upgrades.
The 100-seat venue occupies a former lecture hall at Morrison Hall, a building that also houses music classrooms, practice rooms, and Berkeley’s storied collection of baroque, classical, gamelan, and other world instruments.
David Milnes, the chair of the Department of Music, noted that campus and the surrounding community needed a smaller, more intimate setting for performances like vocal recitals and chamber music. Already, several institutions have expressed interest in booking the venue for performances.
“It’ll be transformative,” said Milnes, who also serves as a professor and the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra’s music director. “There are so many uses for the new hall. It’s going to be an excellent place for people from all kinds of disciplines to come and present their work.”
The Helen and Thomas Wu Performance Hall is a beautiful addition to the campus’s public outreach efforts, with recitals and performances of jazz, vocals, choral groups, chamber music, Baroque opera productions, and Latin and Chinese music ensembles. The new room will also serve as the principal performance venue for the music department’s research partner, the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, which will present innovative digital audio and video productions.
A September 2024 gamelan performance (photo by Grant Kerber)