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O'Neill Hall of Music and Sacred Music

Our Facilities

O Neill Hall Pic Updated

Sacred Music at Notre Dame, our graduate program, and the Department of Music, Notre Dame’s undergraduate music program, are located in the O'Neill Hall of Music and Sacred Music. The 100,000-square-foot, seven-story building on the south side of Notre Dame Stadium, was made possible by a gift to the University from Helen Schwab and her husband Charles, in honor of her brother, Notre Dame alumnus and trustee, Joseph I. O’Neill III.The Hall features two concert venues of deliberately different characters, smart classrooms, rehearsal rooms, a lecture hall, faculty and staff offices, a workroom for graduate students, and a light-filled, full-service music library, an excellent venue for study and research. Take a tour.

Performance Spaces

The LaBar Recital Hall features a traditional stage, fixed seating, and a formal atmosphere suited to classical concert music for small ensembles by students, faculty, and guest artists.

  • 180 seat venue
  • Fully customizable lights
  • Live streaming capabilities
  • Premier audio and visual recording
  • Dropdown 24x16 foot projection screen
  • Brand new Steinway & Sons Model D 9’
  • Built-in reverberant acoustical chambers and dampers
  • 3 different window shade variants: solar, acoustic, blackout
     

The LaBar Performance Hall, an interdisciplinary performance space, has a similar intimate scale, but accommodates alternative types of musical events involving music in combination with other media, such as projected text and visual images, and other forms of artistic expression, such as acting, lighting, and dance. It features flexible seating and staging options in a “black-box” style setting designed to support avant-garde performance and experimentation.

  • Completely modular venue
  • Fully customizable to fit needs of artist and audience
  • Features a Steinway & Sons Model B 7’
  • 36x18 foot video screen built into the west wall
  • Built in reverberant acoustical chambers and dampers
  • Retractable acoustic curtain to help absorb sound
  • 3 different window shade variants: solar, acoustic, blackout

Music Library, Rehearsal Halls & Classrooms

At the center of the third floor is the music library and its diverse collection of resources. Its lounge spaces and study areas host informal interactions between students and faculty flowing out of classrooms and rehearsal halls.

Music Library

Our collection consists of over 35,000 scores, 25,000 books, and 20,000 media items, and focuses on the Western Tradition and Sacred and Liturgical music, but it also covers music from all genres, time periods, and cultures to support teaching and research throughout the University. Three group rooms, a reading room, a small music lab, and a seminar room along with study areas throughout the library create a variety of spaces for students and faculty to research, study, learn, and connect with each other and with the repertory and other materials.   

Michuda Large Rehearsal Hall & Medium Rehearsal Hall

  • Brand new Steinway & Sons Model S and Yamaha upright Model U3
  • Used for large choirs up to 60-70 members & conducting choirs up to 25 members
  • Full AV capabilities

Classrooms 

  • Two medium classrooms that fits 36 people 
  • A large lecture hall that fits 60 people 
  • Two seminar style classrooms that fit 12 people 
  • Full AV capabilities
  • Pianos in every classroom

Practice Rooms and Instruments

In addition, O’Neill Hall includes a lab for studio production, numerous practice rooms, choral library and faculty offices for both the Department of Music and the Sacred Music program.  
Practice Rooms

  • 4 Lesson Rooms
  • 16 Practice Rooms 
  • 4 Practice Organs (Gober, Jaeckel, Holtkamp & Schreiner)
  • 6 Office/studios
  • 2 Harpsichord practice rooms 
  • 1 Fortepiano practice room 
  • 55 pianos including a 9-foot Steinway concert grand piano, three 7-foot baby grand pianos, 27 grand pianos and 28 uprights

Fun Facts

  • The 4th floor is home to Foley’s at Notre Dame Stadium, a premier venue for rent 
  • Notre Dame Stadium’s jumbotron is located on the north face of our building

The University of Notre Dame has invested heavily in state-of-the-art facilities for musical instruction and performance in addition to O’Neill Hall. The parade of excellence began with the opening of the Debartolo Performing Arts Center in 2004. The DPAC boasts one of the most acoustically brilliant concert halls in North America, Leighton Hall, which seats around 850 people, and maintains exciting performing series every year (Co-vid years excluded) that include an organ series with master classes for our students and collaborations with singers and choral groups. There are two organs in the Reyes Organ and Choral Hall: a tracker organ in the north-German style by Paul Fritts, and an Neopolitan organ from c. 1685, now on loan. For detailed descriptions of these instruments and our other organs see the brochure "Organs at Notre Dame." Patricia George Decio Theater in the DPAC is also the home of Opera ND, and performances feature SMND students every year. In addition to these splendid facilities, SMND students have access to the Murdy Family Organ, situated on campus in the magnificent Basilica of the Sacred Heart.