SHREVEPORT, LA--A state-of-the-art audio-visual recording studio is in the works at Centenary College's Hurley School of Music. Construction is expected to take place during the summer, with the facility ready for the upcoming fall semester.
The $50,000 studio will enable the Music School to offer the latest advancements in audio-visual recording technology for students, faculty and the college's performing organizations. Procedures are also to be developed to allow area musicians, music organizations and visiting artists to take advantage of the new recording capabilities, said Dr. Gale Odom, dean of the Hurley School of Music.
Most of the funding for the facility comes from The Booth-Bricker Fund of New Orleans, which has provided a grant of $40,000.
The studio will provide Centenary with the capacity to produce professionally recorded digital tapes, compact discs and audio cassettes that will capture the acoustics of a live, auditorium setting. "There isn't a studio like this in a nice hall like this anywhere in the area," Dr. Odom said.
She described the studio as the premier education-based recording facility in North Louisiana, South Arkansas and East Texas. A survey of schools in the Consortium for Education, Research and Teaching of North Louisiana (CERT) showed that there are no other such facilities within 200 miles.
"The recording studio will enable Centenary to expand its curricular offerings and provide students with the opportunity to apply what they learn in the classroom in hands-on productions," said Centenary President Kenneth L. Schwab.
Community music organizations that use the Hurley Auditorium, such as the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, the Shreveport Opera, The Baroque Artists of Shreveport, The Prevailing Winds Symphonic Band and The Shreveport Chamber Singers, are likely to use the Hurley recording studio. It will enhance a multi-station computer laboratory and a composer's studio already in place in Hurley School of Music, Dr. Odom said.
Centenary's Hurley School of Music offers the bachelor of music degree with a major in performance, theory/composition, sacred music or music education, and bachelor of arts degree with a major in music. About eight percent of the undergraduate students at Centenary are music majors while about 25 percent participate in some curricular aspect of music.
Hurley School of Music undergraduates regularly win major awards at annual competitions held by the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and the school has had an enviable record of winners at regional competitions held by the Metropolitan Opera. Graduates of the Hurley School perform with major symphony orchestras and opera companies around the world. Many graduates have received graduate training at the premiere university music schools and conservatories in this country, and are now teaching faculty at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
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