The sounds of piano practice sessions, quiet conversation and clicking keyboards are back in a unique room in the Weitz Center for Creativity. After a short hiatus, Carleton College’s Music Resource Center (MRC) has reopened with a renewed purpose: part-seminar room, part-historical archive and part-student lounge. It’s a space where music majors and minors can study, collaborate and explore the evolution of recorded sound — from Edison cylinders to Logic Pro.

The re-opening wasn’t so much a re-opening as a re-orientation. 

“We closed it last year temporarily because we had a staff change and also we were in the process of repurposing it,” said Professor Justin London, head of the Music Resource Center. “It wasn’t so much that we were re-opening it after closing it; it was a little pause and then we were figuring out how to redo the management. But we have re-oriented it to better support our teaching.”

The re-orientation was part of a broader departmental self-study and external review, a process that occurs every ten years. “One of the things we thought about was, what are we going to do with the Music Resource Center?” London said. “The use of the MRC has changed over the years.”

Initially, the MRC was a music listening room housed in the old Music Hall. “Back when we were in [the] old music hall across campus… if you were taking a music class or playing in [the] orchestra and needed to listen to something, you came here,” London recalled. “There were turntables and LPs and then later on cassettes… and then CDs. These days, it’s all delivered over Moodle, or part of the thing would be a Spotify playlist.”

With universal digital access coming to Carleton decades ago, the need for physical listening stations diminished. But the department saw new potential in the space. “We actually have a lot of old media and now we have integrated it into our teaching,” London said. “We have every audio reproduction device. That’s an Edison cylinder… a 78 disk… an LP listening station… cassette decks. We will have a reel-to-reel at some point.”

The collection functions like a museum of audio history. “There is a museum-like aspect to it,” London said. “We can show people… here’s the oldest recordings and here’s how it worked. And we’ll gingerly play some of them so you know what they sound like.”

The MRC isn’t just an archive — it’s a teaching display tailored to Carleton’s curriculum. “The MRC has always been a teaching collection,” London emphasized. “It’s where we would acquire source materials because we needed them for a class, or the orchestra was performing this piece and we wanted students to be able to listen to it.”

Some of those materials are now being redistributed to faculty offices for more direct access. “We had, for example, opera scores or vocal music scores. No one was checking them out,” London said. “So now the piano faculty actually has those scores in their office… Likewise, the vocal scores are all going to Rick Penning’s (senior lecturer in voice) office.”

This shift frees up space for new uses. “It’s going to become a dedicated music seminar room,” London said. “For most of the music seminar classes, [they] will be taught here and then you come here to do your seminar class work. So it will work very synergistically.”

Beyond its academic function, the MRC is also being reimagined as a social hub. “We’re trying to actually recreate some of that need [to come here],” London said. “When you had to come here to do your homework… it then becomes a natural place where students get to talk to each other and help each other with their homework and socialize.”

Music SDAs (Student Department Assistants) have been instrumental in promoting the re-opening. “We’ve just been working on the event for getting some pizzas ready and getting some food, you know, make it so people know that they have the space,” said Bryce Bernstein ’26, one of the SDAs. “Our role is advertising mainly.”

Bernstein sees the space as both functional and comfortable. “I definitely use it for relaxing and studying,” he said. “Some people use it for doing their work if they don’t have the software on their own computers. But for me, it’s just relax and study.”

Harrison James ’26, another SDA, echoed that sentiment. “Now music majors and minors have privileged access to it so they can use their one cards to get in,” he said. “There’s space to relax… some computers with different software… [and] a record player with a whole bunch of records that anyone could put out whenever they want to.”

The MRC’s resources span centuries of musical technology. “We have specialized software,… sequencing programs and things that you would be using in a composition class or Professor Mazzariello’s Music 108 class,” London said. “Those programs live on these machines and [students] come in and can use them.”

Bernstein emphasized the range of tools available: “The Resource Center has a lot of great stuff for music students. It’s got a collection of scores… a record collection… computers that have software… like Logic, which you can use for composing, or certain notation software, fancier than MuseScore.”

Even MuseScore has its place. “I use it,” Bernstein said. “But there’s paid software that probably does a little better.”

An event was held on Thursday, Oct. 23, to commemorate the re-opening. The occasion was small but meaningful. “It was good,” James said. “We had a lot of faculty members there, a few majors and then some prospective majors, some sophomores, which was very exciting. And we just ate pizza and had fun.”

When asked what students could expect at the event, Bernstein replied simply: “Pizza.” Then added, “And music faculty to talk with. Some other snacks as well.”

The event was designed to build community and raise awareness. “We just kind of had the idea to have a reopening time so that people could come in and check out the new MRC and see what it’s about,” James said. “It was just kind of a little way to build community.”

While the MRC is now open, its transformation is ongoing. “It’s still right now a work in progress,” London said. “We don’t quite have the seminar area the way we’d like. We want to set up an LCD projection…we’ve been moving some of the print collection…we’ll then have a whiteboard area.”

The department is experimenting with layout and furnishings. “We got some tables out of storage,” London said. “We’re going to see how they work… Do we have enough chairs? ”

The goal is to finalize the setup over the next 18 months. “Then hopefully the college will spend a little money, not a lot, but a little bit to just get all the things in place,” London said. “So it can really be the teaching space that we would like it to be, as well as a nice place for music majors and minors and other interested students to be able to come and do their work and just hang out.”

James sees the space as a much-needed gathering point for a diverse department. “Music is such a spread out area,” he said. “There are so many people doing different lessons and in different ensembles…it’s nice for them to have a space where they all come together and they can spend time together and get to know each other.”

When asked what excites him most about the reopening, Bernstein said, “I’m excited for it to get a little bit less empty there. It’s a pretty big room… So I think it’ll be nice to have some people there.”

“I like that it is a relatively isolated place to lock in and get some work done,” Bernstein said. “The scores are pretty fun. I found some scores for a symphony I played a few years ago and looked them over for a bit. So it’s kind of interesting.”

The MRC is  not just reviving a space — it’s reviving a culture of shared listening, learning and community. As London aptly puts it,  “It’s doing something different than what the space did even ten years ago, let alone 30.”