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Beall Concert Hall
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Beall Concert Hall is the primary performance hall at the School of Music and Dance. It is used for more than 200 performances annually, including student and faculty recitals, concerts by UO ensembles and guest artists, and for conferences and special series such as the University of Oregon Chamber Music Series, the Oregon Bach Festival and the Music Today Festival. Besides the Oregon Bach Festival, the School of Music and Dance and Beall Concert Hall helped foster the beginning of several important musical organizations in Eugene, such as the Eugene Symphony Orchestra, the Oregon Mozart Players, and the Oregon Festival of American Music, to name a few. Beall Hall has become known as one of the premier recital halls in the country, hosting some of the finest chamber and solo musicians in the world, including the Guarneri, the Emerson, and Tokyo String Quartets, the Beaux Arts Trio, sopranos Arlene Auger and Phyllis Bryn-Julson, The King’s Singers, jazz artist Billy Taylor, pianist composer Bela Bartok, and sarod artist Ali Akbar Khan, a lecture by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the list goes on.

Ellis F. Lawrence, architect and founder of the University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts, designed Beall Concert Hall. Lawrence consistently produced buildings of distinction throughout the Northwest and is renowned for designing some of the most important and beautiful buildings on campus. These include the Museum of Art, the facade and original core of the Knight Library, and Gerlinger Hall. Beall Concert Hall merits recognition as a part of this strong and beautiful character.

Although the concert hall was built in 1921, it did not receive its current name until a half century later. Robert Vinton Beall (pronounced Bell), a farmer from the Medford area and a member of a pioneer family, attended the University of Oregon from 1894-97 and donated a sizable sum of money to the university to establish and maintain a living memorial to pioneer women in Oregon. His bequest funded construction of the School of Music and Dance’s nationally renowned Jurgen Ahrend organ, which was completed in 1972. The university named Beall Concert Hall in 1973 in honor of this legacy.

The concert hall is a brick bearing wall system with wood truss spanning members. The lovely ceiling with its distinctive ornamental cavities is one of the architectural highlights of the hall. Lawrence was a student in architecture in Boston during the time Boston Symphony Concert Hall was being built and used its design as inspiration when asked to build a music auditorium. Although smaller in scale and far less ornamental than Boston Symphony Hall, its architectural lineage is evident, including its exceptional acoustical properties.

The original windows in the hall were covered decades ago to control both light and acoustics. The original seats were folding wood seats on metal frames, and for acoustical reasons, are still used in the balcony. The seats on the main floor have been replaced twice, most recently in 1996 during a renovation of the hall that included a restored lobby to the style of the early 1920s.

Beall Concert Hall will continue its high tradition of service to the students of the University of Oregon, and will be an enduring focal point in the arts of our community and our state.