Riverside CCD Coil School for the Arts

Designed with acoustics as the number one priority, the new Coil School for the Arts (CSA) Concert Hall is the home of the renowned Riverside City College music program that has become a community cultural destination. A centerpiece of the District’s Renaissance Block for the Arts development, the CSA provides a magnificent performance venue supported by instruction and musical rehearsal spaces. The project includes a state-of-the-art recording studio, choir room, large orchestra/band room, piano lab, percussion room, individual practice rooms, classrooms and faculty offices.

Inspired by the design of a musical instrument and symbolic of a sheet of music, the project’s 450-seat variable acoustics concert hall’s deployable wall panels, mechanized drapery and a movable stage cloud can be customized and tuned to support any music genre. A dramatic cantilever shelters the public outside before and after the concerts. Glass at the lower level invites people into the lobby while the patterned wood laminate panels resemble the craft of wood-made musical instruments.

The new CSA was referred to by Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Principal Trumpetist, Thomas Hooten, as “a true sonic gem”. Mr. Hooten stated that he had “found the Concert Hall to be one of the warmest and most responsive halls he’d ever played in. Not only is it great for the performer, but it will add great depth to the development of young musicians looking to build their own sound”.