Articulations

---

O Melodious Opening!

Choirs sang, bands played, birds warbled -- all manner of music helped welcome the new Austin Lyric Opera office center and school into the local arts community. That's just as it should be when a new facility dedicated to the performance of and instruction in music opens, but there was more to last Saturday's debut of the opera's Mary Ann Heller Center and Armstrong Community Music School -- a sort of Mozartian jubilation that pervaded the building and grounds, as if the air itself were humming. Maybe it was that the couple of hundred Austinites on hand were aware that this facility is more than just a triumph for one justifiably proud arts organization and a priceless addition to the city's centers for music, it was the first new cultural structure to rise on the South Bank the opening of which ushered in a new era for the arts in Austin.

Maybe. But even without that historic aspect, ALO HQ offered lots to inspire a rhapsodic aria: a compact but open foyer that draws one into the building, several practice rooms designated for individuals and small ensembles (all of them equipped with shiny Yamaha pianos), a multimedia center for the creation and playing of electronic music, a recital room for intimate performances, a wonderfully vast rehearsal hall, upper-floor office space with large windows fronting Town Lake, and a petit rooftop garden.

Hotshot Lone Star architects Lake/Flato have not disappointed with this latest effort. They've crafted a space that's welcoming and engaging and even fun while employing straightforward organization and sometimes less-than-glamorous materials. The layout is a plain "L" shape, with the opera's administrative offices -- the Heller Center -- in the base of the "L" and the schoolrooms and rehearsal hall in the stem, but the variations in such elements as the width of the hallways, the size of the rooms, the placement of windows, and orientation of offices, all contribute to a sense of space expanding and contracting within the building, as if the shape of it is much more varied than it is. And for a space with as much unadorned concrete as it has -- walls inside and out, the first-floor floor -- the building generates a surprising warmth. Credit the abundance of windows, which not only flood so much of the building with natural light but also connect the interior space with the greenery encompassing the center, in Town Lake Park across Barton Spring Road and the Bouldin Creek neighborhood rising up behind it. The incorporation of theatrical elements -- the use of rich, dramatic colors (muted perhaps but still striking), set pieces in the foyer and theatrically inspired artwork in the first-floor hallway, the sidewalk nod to building patrons in bricks resembling ticket stubs -- also add to the appeal of the space and make it cause for celebration.

Naturally, ALO staff were beaming as the throngs trooped up and down the hallways, enthusiastically poking their heads in room after room, plopping down to hear student ensembles play their hearts out and generously applauding their efforts. At one point, general director Joe McClain, for whom this facility has been a long-cherished dream, was making the rounds with his baby granddaughter in his arms. Like any good grandpa, he was flush with pride over this blessing of his. But occasionally, he would be distracted by some inquiry about the new center, which was usually followed by a compliment about it. Then he would flush with pride again, but this time for his own baby.