Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the German polymath whose life and work embodied the connections between the arts and sciences, is said to have described architecture as “frozen music.”
When the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building at MIT had its public opening earlier this year, the temperature outside may have been below freezing but the performances inside were a warm-up for the inaugural concert that took place in the evening. During the afternoon, visitors were invited to workshops in Balinese gamelan and Senegalese drumming, alongside performances by the MIT Chamber Music Society, MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, and the MIT Laptop Ensemble (FaMLE), demonstrating the synergy between global music traditions and contemporary innovation in music technology. The building was filled with visitors from the MIT community and the Boston area, keen to be among the first to enter the new building and discover what MIT Music had planned for the opening occasion.
The evening’s landmark concert, Sonic Jubilance, celebrated the building’s completion and the pivotal role of MIT Music and Theater Arts (MTA) at the center of life on campus. The program was distinguished by five world premieres by MIT composers: “Summit and Mates,” by assistant professor in jazz Miguel Zenón; “Grace,” by senior lecturer in music Charles Shadle; “Two Noble Kinsmen,” by professor emeritus in music John Harbison; and “Madrigal,” by Keeril Makan, the Michael (1949) and Sonja Koerner Music Composition Professor.
The premieres were interwoven through the program with performances by MIT ensembles demonstrating the breadth and depth of the conservatory-level music program — from the European classical tradition to Brazilian beats to Boston jazz (the full list of participating ensembles can be found below).
Each performance demonstrated the different ways the space could be used to create new relationships between musicians and audiences. Designed in the round by the architecture firm SANAA, the Thomas Tull Concert Hall allows sound to resonate from the circular stage or from the aisles above the tiered seating; performers might be positioned below, above, or even in the midst of the audience.
“Music has been a part of MIT’s curriculum and culture from the beginning,” said Chancellor Melissa Nobles in her opening address. “Arriving at this magnificent space has taken the collective efforts of past presidents, provosts, deans, faculty, alumni, and students, all working to get us here this evening.”
Jay Scheib, the Class of 1949 Professor and MIT MTA section head, emphasized the vital role of Music at MIT as a source of cohesion and creativity for students, faculty, and the wider MIT community.
“The new building is an extraordinary home for us. As a destination to convene communities around world musics and cultures, to engage in emerging music technologies, and to experience concerts and premieres featuring our extraordinary students and our internationally renowned faculty — the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building is truly a transformational thing.”
The concert was also the launch event of Artfinity, MIT’s largest public festival of the arts since 2011, featuring more than 80 free performing and visual arts events. The concert hall will host performances throughout the spring, ranging from classical to jazz to rap, and more.
Institute Professor Marcus Thompson — the faculty co-lead for Artfinity alongside Azra Akšamija, director and associate professor of the Art, Culture, and Technology Program (ACT) at MIT — shared thoughts on the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building as a point of orientation for the festival.
“Our building offers the opportunity to point to the presence and importance of other art forms, media, practices, and experiences that can bring us together as practitioners and audiences, lifting our spirits and our sights,” Thompson reflected. “An ensemble of any kind is a community as well as a metaphor for what connects us, applying different talents to create more than we can do alone.”
The new compositions by the four faculty members were a case in point. The program opened with “Summit,” a brass fanfare projected from the top of the hall with ceremonial zeal. “The piece was specifically written as an opener for the concert,” Zenón explained. “My aim was to compose something that would make a statement straight away, while also using the idea of the ‘groove’ as a driving force. The title has two meanings. The first is a mountaintop, or the top of a structure — which is where the ensemble will be placed for the performance. The second is a gathering of great minds and great leaders, which is what MIT feels like for me.” Later in the program, Zenón premiered a jazz contrafact, “Mates,” playing on Benny Golson’s Stablemates, a tribute to Herb Pomeroy, founder of MIT’s jazz program. “The idea here is to use something connected to the jazz tradition — and to Boston’s history — and approach it from a more personal perspective,” said Zenón.
“Two Noble Kinsmen,” by Harbison, was composed as a benediction for the new home of MIT Music. “In choosing to set Shakespeare’s final words in this new piece for choir and strings, I wanted to convey the sense of an invocation, an introduction, an address to unseen forces,” said Harbison. “In this case, I wanted to leave the musical structure as plain as possible so that we understand why these words are chosen. I hoped to capture the stoic balance of these lines — they are in themselves a kind of verbal music.”
In setting the words of the poem “Grace,” by the Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan, Shadle — a composer of Choctaw heritage — envisioned a “sonic extension” of the MIT Land Acknowledgement. “‘Grace’ intended to speak to the Indigenous presence at the Institute and to open the new building with a reminder of the balm music that can bring to a troubled world,” said Shadle. “I hope that I have composed music that links Indigenous and Western traditions in ways that are compelling and thoughtful and that, while recognizing the ‘pieces of hurt,’ still makes a place for grace.”
Before the concert’s euphoric finale — a performance by Rambax Senegalese Drum Ensemble directed by Lamine Touré — “Madrigal” (the evening’s fourth world premiere) served to demonstrate the spatial dimensions of sound made possible by the design of the concert hall.
Makan’s composition was performed by four student violinists positioned at the top of each aisle and a fifth, Professor Natalie Lin Douglas, at the center of the stage, simultaneously showcasing the geometry of the hall and referencing the ever-shifting perspectives of the sculpture that stands at the north entrance of the building — “Madrigal (2024),” by Sanford Biggers.
“My piece aims to capture the multifaceted quality of Sanford Biggers’ sculpture. From whichever vantage point we might look at it, we see the same patterns in new relationships with one another. In other words, there is no one point of view that is privileged over another.”
As faculty lead for the building project, Makan developed a friendship with Joyce Linde, who provided the principal gift that led to the building. “Joyce and I were on the selection committee to choose an artist to create a site-specific sculpture outside the building. She was very excited about the process, and very engaged with Sanford,” said Makan. “Joyce passed away before she was able to see the building’s completion, and I wanted to honor her legacy by writing an original piece of music in her memory.”
That sense of relationship, pattern-making, and new beginnings was articulated by Frederick Harris, director and senior lecturer in music and the co-producer of the concert, alongside Andy Wilds, program manager in music. “The hall is an instrument; we’re communing with this incredible space and getting to know it,” said Harris. “It’s a relationship. The circular form of the hall is very welcoming, not only to immersive experiences but also to shared experiences.”
The role of music in cultivating community will ensure that the building will become an integral part of MIT life. The work taking place in rehearsal rooms matches the innovation of the Institute’s labs — proving that the arts are a necessary counterpart to science and technology, continuous with the human instinct to express and invent. Sonic Jubilance sets the tone of what’s to come.
MIT Music ensembles (in order of concert appearance):
MIT Concert Choir
MIT Chamber Chorus
MIT Chamber Music Society
MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble
MIT Jazz Advanced Music Performance Ensemble
MIT Axiom Ensemble
MIT Wind Ensemble
MIT Gamelan Galak Tika
Rambax MIT