Like Night and Day

After decades in the basement, Curtis's percussion department moves to the light-filled Allerton Foundation Percussion Studios in Lenfest Hall.

Percussion students Michael Sparhuber and Mari Yoshinaga practicing in one of the Allerton Percussion Studios (photo courtesy of Matt Wargo). 

If you listened closely, it was always there: the rumble of the timpani, the cymbal crash, the opening notes of Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” rapped out on the xylophone, over and over. On any given day, on the lower floors of Curtis’s main building at 1726 Locust Street, you could sense the presence of the percussion department. Over the decades many a meeting in the majestic Bok Room has proceeded to this distinctive Curtis soundtrack!

With the department’s move to the two spacious Allerton Foundation Percussion Studios in Lenfest Hall, you immediately sense that acoustics are no longer an issue. Closed in behind the enormous wooden doors of the studio, your voice is absorbed in the dryness of the room’s acoustics. It’s easy to see why the school had the confidence to place percussionists just across the hallway from Gould Rehearsal Hall: the notes played there are staying put.