Under the rain of confetti and to the roll of drums, University of California, Davis, officials today celebrated the start of a project to clear a site for a $15 million new music recital hall and classroom building. The milestone was made possible by philanthropic support from local arts patrons.

When the facility is completed, it is expected to become one of the region’s most active concert venues, offering more than 100 performances annually by such groups as the UC Davis Chorus, University Chamber Singers, Empyrean Ensemble, UC Davis Jazz Band and UC Davis Baroque Ensemble. It also will provide much-needed classroom space for the university.

“This is a tremendously exciting day and the culmination of years of work and planning,” said Jessie Ann Owens, dean of the UC Davis Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies and a musicologist. “This project is the realization of a long-held campus dream — the beginning of a building that will benefit generations of music students and scholars and bring further distinction to UC Davis and our community.”

Workers have begun tearing down two existing buildings — the old boiler plant and Temporary Building 195, the former firehouse — to make room for the new facility.

Grace and Grant Noda and their adult daughters, who gave $1 million toward the project in 2008, recently pledged an additional $500,000. The Nodas were introduced to the project by their longtime friend, Barbara K. Jackson, who is well known for her gift to name the concert hall in the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis and who has also generously supported the recital hall project in the past.

During the ceremony — an event that included a performance by the UC Davis student percussion band — UC Davis officials announced that the recital hall lobby will be named in honor of the Noda family and the facility’s main stage will be named for Jackson.

“Music has always been important in my family and we are happy to be able to help,” Grace Noda said. “It was clear to us how much this is needed and how great an impact it will have.”

In all, philanthropic support will fund $5 million of the cost of building the new facility. With the latest gifts from the Nodas, nearly half of that total has been raised — a threshold that allowed demolition to begin.

The university will be seeking an additional $2.6 million in philanthropic support to keep the project on schedule. Campus officials are optimistic that groundbreaking for the Classroom and Recital Hall will begin in 2014 and have a target completion date of 2015.  

“This is a community that has been very generous to music at UC Davis, and we hope they will step forward to allow us to complete this much-needed concert venue and teaching facility,” Owens said.

The university will use tax-exempt bonds to finance the remaining $10 million construction cost, which will be paid from campus funds. No student tuition, fees or state funds will be used.

The more than 14,000 square-foot Classroom and Recital Hall will include an intimate, acoustically superb 375-seat concert venue for chamber, vocal and solo music recitals. The facility will also feature four new teaching studios, recording controls, artist and audience amenities, an outdoor plaza and a production office.

The UC Davis Department of Music’s Shinkoskey Noon Concerts series, currently held in the Mondavi Center lobby and in a rehearsal room in the existing Music Building, will take place in the new recital hall. The hall will also be the new home for the popular music survey class, “Music 10: Introduction to Musical Literature,” which attracts hundreds of students each quarter.

“The Music Building has been bursting at the seams for decades as we continue to squeeze more and more students and programs — jazz, world music, ethnomusicology, popular music — into an already tight space,” said Henry Spiller, associate professor and chair of the Department of Music. “The new Classroom and Recital Hall will provide a crucial new space for general students, music majors, our guest performers, our dedicated faculty, and the entire community to learn, perform and enjoy a wide variety of musical activities.”

The Department of Music has grown dramatically since the current Music Building was built in 1966, with the number of undergraduate music majors growing from 11 to nearly 100.  The faculty has increased in size from six to 14. In addition to music majors, the department teaches more than 1,400 students annually.

“One of the things I like most about this new building is that it gives two historic centerpieces of the Davis experience their first proper home: the noon concerts and Music 10, both of which have been going on since well before the founding of a Department of Music in 1958,” said Professor D. Kern Holoman, who has taught Music 10 in overcrowded venues for many years.

“Students deserve to be able to hear the results of their labors in a proper acoustical environment. The public — taxpayers , patrons, parents — deserves to be accommodated in welcoming surroundings of sufficient size and modernity. The music itself deserves such a venue, especially that music produced by our own student instrumentalists and singers, our world music ensembles, and our top-rated professional composers-in-the-making,” Holoman said.

Gifts to the Classroom and Recital Hall are part of The Campaign for UC Davis, the university’s first comprehensive fundraising campaign which seeks to raise $1 billion from 100,000 donors by 2014.