Facilities

Students have access to a wide range of state-of-the-art equipment and resources at The Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama during their time studying Music at Manchester.

There are two major performance spaces within the Martin Harris Centre:

• The Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall – has an acoustically designed auditorium that seats an audience of up to 350 people, with a spacious stage area large enough to accommodate a full symphony orchestra
• John Thaw Studio Theatre – named in recognition of the kind support of the John Thaw Foundation – seats up to 150, and is a flexible space, mainly used for dramatic productions within the university.

In addition, the Martin Harris Centre houses the John Casken Lecture Theatre, the Lenagan Library, and a wide range of teaching rooms and specialist rehearsal and practice spaces, as well as the offices of the academic staff of both the Music and the Drama departments, and the ever-important Café Arts.

There are extensive practising facilities available, including rooms for individual practice and group rehearsals. They house a large number of good-quality pianos (including eleven grand pianos), a harpsichord, chamber organ, fortepiano, square piano and a Javanese gamelan.

The Music department also owns a range of orchestral instruments, and an impressive collection of early musical instruments – including a complete set of reproduction Baroque instruments, loaned to students who play in our Baroque Orchestra, Renaissance recorders, crumhorns, cornetti and a chest of viols. A suite of electronic pianos is available for harmony work and keyboard skills.

Students have access to a wide range of music books, scores, reference tools and recordings in various libraries such as The Lenagan Library, The University of Manchester Library, John Rylands Library, The Henry Watson Library and many more.