Music Students: New Noorda Center ‘fantastic’ for UVU’s program

Lauren Erickson and Brendan Wiggins both play in the UVU Wind Symphony, and each of them praised the music department and the Noorda Performing Art Center, the newly opened art building.

Wiggins, a sophomore Music Education major, plays the french horn in both the wind symphony and a brass quintet.

“Performing with the different groups and ensembles at UVU has been a great experience,” Wiggins said. “[We] always make great music and it’s always been an honor to play with them.”

Erickson, a senior double majoring in flute performance and commercial music, also performs with the wind symphony. She has recently written her own concerto for flute and piano and is currently working on orchestrating it. She entered this piece into a concerto competition on campus. Out of around 50 who competed, four were selected to perform, and Erickson’s original piece was selected as the alternate.

“It was very scary because I was competing with people who were playing concertos by like Dvorak,” Erickson said. “That was intimidating because my composition, of course, can’t compare to Debussy. Those people did get in and I was picked as an alternate.”

This is Erickson’s last semester at UVU and she will put together a senior recital. For these recitals, students have to secure their own performance venue—Erickson is using the Noorda Center.

Both Erickson and Wiggins are eager to utilize the features of the new building. The main frustration they expressed about the building is that it is not quite finished. There are production suites where students can record, but the “main recording space,” according to Erickson, is still under construction.

“The Noorda center is fantastic, an absolutely gorgeous building,” Wiggins said. “The concert hall and proscenium are amazing.”

“It still does feel very surreal,” Erikson said. “I’ve been going here the past five years and I’ve seen people doing the funding and I thought I would never get to see it, since I would probably graduate before it was done. I’m impressed at how fast the construction was.”

The Noorda Center offers many improvements to the tools students use. This building has 27 practice rooms, about three times more than the previous building had. Nearly all the rehearsal spaces are set up so students and groups can record in them. Even the chairs in the rehearsal spaces are high quality and will improve the students’ experience while practicing.

“I am hoping the new building will make a drastic change in our music program in the years to come,” Wiggins said. “With such a nice space to rehearse and perform in and our great faculty, I hope to see UVU as a great option for great music students from around the country.”

Featured photo by Meghan Dehass.