ROCHESTER N.Y. – After more than a year of construction, the Jane and Laurence Glazer Music Performance Center — located adjacent to the Nazareth College Arts Center — is complete.
The $15.5 million project is a 550-seat venue designed for the acoustics of large instrumental ensembles.
Rita Mannelli, executive director for Nazareth College Arts, says the venue will be “a rehearsal space for our students as well as a performance space. It’s an additional space for the programming of the arts center as well – so bringing the top national and international acts here to Rochester to perform in this beautiful music hall.”
Daan Braveman, president of Nazareth College said in honor of the Glazers, “We’re able to name this for Larry and Jane Glazer, who really were so involved in the community here and we lost them way too early but we’re pleased to have this enduing memorial to them.”
To celebrate, the center hosted a gala in and around the venue, which included musical performances and a ribbon cutting ceremony, Saturday evening.
Tyler Nadrich, a music education major adds that, “With the new hall we have movable curtains all throughout it and we can adjust our sounds so we can hear ourselves better and so that the audience perceives us better and having that as a college and as a performing arts school, it’s one of the cool things not a lot of the other schools have.”
Conducting the Nazareth College Symphony Orchestra, Chorus and Jazz Ensemble is Emmy Award-winning composer and alumnus Jack Allocco.
In support, the project also received a total of $1.5 million from Senator Rich Funke and from Empire State Development through the Regional Economic Development Council.
The hall will serve as the base for rehearsals and performances for the Nazareth Department of Music, as 20 percent of all College of Arts and Sciences undergraduate students are music majors.