The Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts
opens today at the University of California, Davis, as a
world-class venue for performing arts students and faculty,
its thriving major K-12 arts education program, and one of
the largest arts and lectures presenting programs in the
nation.


Featuring the state-of-the-art 1,800-seat Barbara K. and W.
Turrentine Jackson Hall and the versatile 250-seat Studio
Theatre, the $57 million Mondavi Center is the premier
performance venue in Northern California. Its inaugural
season features a mix of seasoned masters, emerging artists,
regional professional groups, student and faculty performers,
and leading cultural figures in more than 160 performances
and lectures.


"With the opening of Mondavi Center, we not only enter a new
era of opportunity in arts education for our students, but we
also celebrate the creation of a valuable and lasting
cultural resource for the entire region," Chancellor Larry
Vanderhoef said. "I firmly believe that every arts
organization, every audience member, every performing artist
and every student from the Napa Valley to the Lake Tahoe
basin will be enriched beyond measure by this facility and
its programs."


Tonight the Mondavi Center will launch a festival of
performances by international touring artists, regional
performing organizations, and music, theatre, and dance
ensembles from UC Davis. Included among the performances are
tonight's concert by the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by
Michael Tilson Thomas, and an Oct. 4 recital by mezzo-soprano
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, accompanied by pianist Robert
Tweten.


"Mondavi Center is for everybody," said Brian McCurdy,
director of the facility. "That will be evident with our
opening festival, which will feature a diverse range of
events, from traditional to contemporary, both classical and
cutting-edge, from the spectacular to the intimate. We've
long felt that the Sacramento region was ready for a truly
world-class performing arts facility. Judging by the strength
of ticket sales so far, the Sacramento region has indeed
demonstrated a cultural appetite comparable to that of
audiences anywhere in the country."


With inaugural season attendance projected to be well over
100,000, the Mondavi Center's presenting program will
continue the campus's tradition as the home of the largest
and most active arts organizations in the Capital Region and
one of the most culturally diverse in the nation.


The center will also serve as an academic facility that will
help fulfill UC Davis' teaching mission, especially for
students in the Department of Music and Department of Theatre
and Dance. Elizabeth Langland, dean of humanities, arts and
cultural studies, said the completion of the Mondavi Center,
to be followed in the next few years by other planned
facilities, marks a significant step in the campus's
commitment to the future of the arts.


"In order to develop a world-class university, what's needed
are the kinds of facilities -- comparable to the quality we
offer our scientists -- that provide the world's great
artists a venue that highlights their excellence," Langland
said.


The center will be the home of the UC Davis Symphony
Orchestra, the professional in-residence Empyrean Ensemble,
the University Chorus and Chamber Singers, the concert band,
the gospel choir, Jazz Band, Baroque Ensemble and the UC
Davis Wind Ensemble. The Department of Theatre and Dance's
first use of the facility will be in November when a new
professional performance ensemble presents "The Ten PM
Dream." Several other dance programs are planned for the
Studio Theatre. In May the Department of Theatre and Dance
will join with the Department of Music and the Davis Comic
Opera to mount Gilbert and Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore" in
Jackson Hall.


In addition, the center will become the heart of UC Davis'
school outreach programs for the performing arts. UC Davis
has been enhancing K-12 arts education through school
outreach programs for more than 30 years. In the past year
alone, the program reached 30,000 children in the Sacramento
region with school matinees, master classes, lecture-
demonstrations, curriculum guides, and other activities.


UC Davis financed the $57 million performing arts center
through a combination of university funds and a $30 million
capital fund-raising campaign. Among the major donors are
Napa Valley wine maker Robert Mondavi and his wife, Margrit,
who gave $10 million; Barbara K. Jackson and her late
husband, history professor emeritus W. Turrentine Jackson,
who gave $5 million; and the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians,
who gave $600,000 toward the performance hall's construction
and $25,000 to the school matinee program, as well as
$350,000 to endow a UC Davis faculty chair in California
Indian studies and $25,000 to fund a student internship in
support of the campus's annual Native American Culture Days
and PowWow.


Mondavi Center was designed by BOORA Architects of Portland,
Ore., with acoustical design by McKay, Conant, Brook of
Westlake Village, Calif.; theatrical design by Auerbach +
Associates of San Francisco, Calif.; and lighting design by
Auerbach + Glasow of San Francisco. The general contractor
was McCarthy Building Companies Inc. of St. Louis, Mo.


Comprising 103,637 square feet of space, the building is 100
feet high to accommodate the stage's fly tower. It has an
exterior siding of sandstone from India, also used as
acoustic paneling inside the main hall along with Douglas fir
paneling salvaged from the bottom of freshwater Ruby Lake in
British Columbia, Canada.


Jackson Hall was designed as a multipurpose performance
facility with up to 1,800 seats, depending on the
configuration. The hall can be "tuned" to accommodate the
type of performance, with more reverberation for orchestral
performances and minimal reverberation for the spoken word.
To create the reverberation required for classical music, the
hall was designed with a small interior and a shoebox shape
similar to the classic concert halls of Vienna, Boston and
Amsterdam.


To mitigate noise and vibrations from the nearby railroad and
Interstate 80, the building has double-wall construction,
with two feet of air space separating the inner and outer
walls. The basement under Jackson Hall and a "technical
attic" above the ceiling create a "box within a box" for
acoustical isolation.