What's that new wood building in Providence? Inside Community Music Works' new space.

PROVIDENCE − Music spilled onto Westminster Street on Thursday as Community Music Works faculty played in their new space, and on the sidewalk, to announce the opening of the $15-million building.

Large glass doors were pushed aside to allow the musicians to flow into the sidewalk, competing with a fire truck's siren.

Community Music Works threw open the doors to their new building ( 1326 Westminster St. ) to many of its funders, including city and state leaders, as work crews put the finishing touches on the building.

The new building at the corner of Westminster and Dexter streets has been in the works since 2010. While the basement is already filled with instruments, the grand opening is set for Sept. 28 , with two performances of new piece commissioned from composer Wang Lu called "Fabric," written for the event.

The building broke ground in 2022 and much of that time was spent excavating the deep basement, work that took even longer because builders had to shore up the foundation of the mixed-use building next door .

Performance space is the heart of the new building

A wood-paneled building with angles jutting over Westminster Street sidewalk, the heart of the newest edition to Providence's West End is the resonate performance space. Located literally in the center of the building, and the lot, it is designed to be soundproof from the noise outside.

While designing the building, the group decided to go all out in letting people people who aren't in the performance space still see and hear the music.

Thick panes of glass let people see into the performance space, while the sound will be plumbed in via speakers to the open spaces outside of the theater. That should allow someone with a crying baby or a persistent cough to leave the theater, but to still watch and listen, founder and Artistic Director Sebastian Ruth said.

The building is designed to have a series of lounge and performance spaces, insulated from the sound of the practice rooms and from the central performance space.

Arresting appearance

3SIXØ Architecture & Design Architects Chris Bardt and Kyna Leski said the building's design first took into consideration the wants and needs of Community Music Works, but was then propelled by the odd shape ( parallelogram ) of the lot.

The building occupies the entire 10,000 square foot lot and has no parking. The group had to request relief from the city's zoning rules on parking because the lot is just above the limit that allows new projects to have no parking in Providence.

Bardt and Leski used the offset lot to create open spaces within the building. Practice spaces on the second floor are rectangular, but jut out slightly over the sidewalk, while big windows offer views of the street.

Leski said they used rectangular rooms to create triangular negative spaces in the building. That includes a glass "floating" floor on the first level that looks into the basement, and the skylight above that allows light to pour in.

Inside and outside the performance space, they used balconies and stairs to create a "whirlpool" effect.

How much did the building cost?

The building cost $15 million to build. The original estimate, before the pandemic, was $10 million and the cost was subsequently revised upward, Ruth said.

Community Music Works bought the building from the West Broadway Neighborhood Association in 2017, after the organization did some remediation to the site.

The site had been a vehicle service station , which the Association tore down before remediation.

With a bigger space, will Community Music Works expand?

While Community Music Works will be moving into a much bigger space than its original storefront at 1392 Westminster St. , plans for how much the student population grows are still in in flux, Ruth said.

Currently, the group has about 130 students each year, many of whom start very young. Demand for the program is so high that new students are accepted through a lottery system. Currently, students need to be from the West End or South Providence, but with the new building, those strictures may expand.

'Healthy' building materials

Ruth, Leski and Bardt said one of the most important parts of the project was using "healthy" materials, with help from the Healthy Materials Lab in New York. That meant no vinyl flooring ( off gassing ) and mineral-based paints, instead of vinyl ones. The building itself is mostly wood, an incredibly resonate material.

Wang Lu's 'Fabric' to be performed twice for block party

The group is holding a "block party" on Sept. 28 for the new building, including two performances of a new piece by Wang Lu commissioned for the event.

Lu's piece is composed of four movements. It will first be played at 3 p.m., as students parade down Westminster Street from their old storefront location at 1370 Westminster St. Students and faculty will perform on all three levels, before convening in the performance hall for the final movement of the piece. The piece will be performed again at 4:30 p.m.

The block party schedule is:

• 2 p.m. Building tours
• 3 p.m. Perfomance/parade down Westminster Street
• 3:30 p.m. Food trucks arrive
• 4:30 p.m. Reprise performance
• 5:00 p.m. Building tours resume with dancing

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Reach reporter Wheeler Cowperthwaite at wcowperthwaite@providencejournal.com or follow him on Twitter @WheelerReporter .

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: What's that new wood building in Providence? Inside Community Music Works' new space.