All-Steinway School
The JMU School of Music is an All-Steinway School. All-Steinway Schools demonstrate a full commitment to excellence by providing their students and faculties with the best instruments possible for the study of music.
Forbes Center for the Performing Arts
The Forbes Center for the Performing Arts is comprised of the Dorothy Thomasson Estes Center for Theatre and Dance and the Shirley Hanson Roberts Center for Music Performance and houses five state-of-the-art performance venues: the Mainstage Theatre (450 seats), the Concert Hall (600 seats), the Recital Hall (196 seats), the Studio Theatre (200 seats) and the Earlynn J. Miller Dance Theatre (200 seats). It also includes classroom, rehearsal and office facilities.
Recital Hall
The 198-seat Recital Hall is an intimate space designed for student, faculty and guest artist solo and small ensemble recitals. Like the Concert Hall, the Recital Hall is built on a plenum; it also contains adjustable acoustic curtains and a magnificent metal-curved ceiling. Orchestra and side orchestra seating are offered in this stunning venue.
Concert Hall
The 600-seat Concert Hall is a spectacular space designed to accommodate performances by guest artists and large ensembles. The Concert Hall is acoustically perfect; it is built on a plenum to eliminate the noise generated by the airflow of heat and air conditioning, and polished plaster walls help to amplify and absorb sound. The space is set up in an oval configuration and includes an orchestra and balcony level. Both levels offer box seating. Behind the stage on the balcony level, the hall features the Converse Choral Balcony for use by chorus members in large choral ensemble works or by audience members when not in use by musicians.
Mainstage Theatre
The 450-seat Mainstage Theatre is a proscenium theatre designed to accommodate guest artists and choreographers, faculty, and faculty directed works performed by student actors. The space provides an intimate relationship between performers and audience members. Features include a flexible thrust stage, a fly space for full-length backdrops and set pieces, as well as state-of-the-art lighting and sound. Orchestra, balcony and box seating all offer outstanding views of the stage.
360° Views
Concert Hall
Recital Hall
Large Rehearsal Room (1115)
Piano Practice Room
The Music Building
In addition to rehearsal spaces in the Forbes Center for the Performing Arts, JMU boasts the Music Building, one of the region's largest and most contemporary music instruction facilities. The building - with music administrative and faculty offices, classrooms, practice rooms, studios, rehearsal halls, laboratories, a recording studio, a music library/listening lab, and the little Gallery Underground - has become the university's central facility for music instruction and activities.
Acoustical properties throughout the Music Building on the JMU Quad were designed and engineered by Gerald Marshall of Klepper, Marshall & King in New York. That includes 44 practice rooms, 35 faculty studios, and the four rehearsal areas: the band/orchestra room, the choral/lecture room, the Madisonian/opera room, and the jazz/recording studio room.
Wayland Hall
Walking into the lobby of the newly renovated Wayland Hall you immediately feel like you are somewhere important. You know you are at JMU, but this version of residential living elevates the on-campus experience to new levels of sophistication, function and form.
Wayland Hall is a true living and learning center where students in the Visual and Performing Arts Community reside, practice, perform and display their art. It even has two sound insulated practice rooms and a performance hall inside.
Other Facilities
