The Listening Room: Where Music Builds Community

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We had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Lindsay Pope, Director of Choral Studies in the Department of Music and Dance, and one of the co-creators and co-facilitators of The Listening Room, alongside Professor Jonathan Hulting-Cohen, Associate Professor of Saxophone.

The Listening Room serves as a unique daytime concert series where students and faculty perform side by side. The idea grew out of the department’s traditional recital hour, a weekly student performance series of  classical music. During the pandemic, when no audiences were permitted, that format evolved into an opportunity for students to make high-quality recordings. When the pandemic ended, the performances resumed but audiences also did not return.. “If a student wanted to get up and perform, they could,” Dr. Pope recalls, “but there wasn’t a culture of community around it that made it an exciting experience.”

When conversations arose about discontinuing the recital hour altogether, Dr. Pope and Professor Hulting-Cohen saw an opportunity to reimagine it. Together, they proposed The Listening Room, a space for students, faculty, and staff to hear and celebrate the creative work happening across the department.

“We wanted a way for all of our studios—students and faculty alike—to see and hear the incredible talent in our building,” explains Dr. Pope. “We often work in our own little silos, so this has become a wonderful way to curate new concert experiences that bring everyone together.”

To perform in The Listening Room, students must study with a studio teacher. Faculty can nominate themselves or their students to participate, and each concert loosely follows a theme. “Some are more open format,” Dr. Pope says, “but the theme helps shape the program so it feels connected as a shared listening experience.”

September’s concert, titled Rooted in Harmony, featured Dr. Evan McCarthy from Music History and Dr. Marjorie Rubright from the English Department. The lecture-recital combined Earth-themed music and scholarship as part of the interdisciplinary project The Elements. For the past two years, this series has explored natural themes, last year being water, this year being Earth, next year being fire. “Marjorie and Evan lectured on why we chose this theme, honoring the materials our instruments come from, grounding us in the repertoire, and then our students performed works inspired by the trees, forest, and earth.”

The creativity didn’t stop there. October featured a Halloween-themed concert. Their final show of the fall semester, The Listening Room Classic, will take place on December 9th. It will serve as a space for students and faculty to refine their semester projects before juries and recitals. Spring typically brings a jazz-inspired event one time per year, as this is still a classically focused series. This year’s program, entitled The Birth of Cool, is a Miles Davis–inspired session. The department also often includes a music theory focused event. This year's is on March 24 and is called Mixed Message: a pop songwriting collaboration between Ben Geyer, Lecturer in Music at Mount Holyoke College (beats, production, keyboards) and Miriam Piilonen, Assistant Professor of Music Theory at UMass (voice, lyrics, toplines). This Listening Room event combines live performance, music analysis, and discussion of writing and recording techniques.

Beyond the performances themselves, The Listening Room has become a celebration of interdisciplinary artistry. Last spring, Tom Vaccanti, Professor of Dance, choreographed a solo ballet dance to one of Bach's Goldberg variations. The Listening Room concert was a lecture-recital hosted by Erinn Knyt, Professor of Musicology, and was called "Reimagining J.S. Bach's 'Goldberg Variations;" a prelude performance during the department's bi-annual Bach Festival.Dr. Pope notes, “It just feels like we’re hosting something really special for everyone. I’m proud to be a co-creator, it feels like an important service to our community.”

And perhaps the most beloved feature? The post-concert refreshments. Each session concludes with a spread of snacks and fruit in the lobby, encouraging performers and listeners to mingle. “It’s not just about the performance,” Dr. Pope explains. “We want our audience to engage with what they’ve heard, to talk about it, and to build relationships around it.”

The final Listening Room performance of the fall semester takes place on December 9th in the Bromery Center Auditorium. To continue supporting our performers, please consider donating to the Department of Music and Dance’s Minute Fund.