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Ground Broken For New Jacobs School Building

On April 8, the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for their new 85,000-square-foot Faculty Studio Building.

The new building will house 84 studios, each engineered to provide superb acoustics, as well as administrative offices and seminar rooms. It will be located on the corner of 3rd Street and Jordan Avenue, across the street from the current music school buildings.

Ceremony speakers included IU President Michael A. McRobbie, Provost Karen Hanson, and School of Music Dean Gwyn Richards.

Richards told attendees that he sees the building's purpose as beyond practical; to him, it will stand as a testament to the immense growth and improvement the school has seen in recent decades.

Teachers from the music school also chimed in, including saxophone teacher Otis Murphy, who joked that the saxophone was simply "too loud" for his current studio in the Music Annex.

The Kuttner Quartet (made up of IU string students) and the brass section of IU's Wind Ensemble provided music for the ceremonythe latter with a boisterous fanfare to herald the beginning of the groundbreaking proper.

The construction, which will also include a 20,000 square-foot addition to the Musical Arts Center, is being funded by a grant from the Lilly Endowment, an Indianapolis philanthropic foundation. The anticipated cost for the project is $44 million.

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