One Handsome Hall

Tiffani Frost of the CityDance Ensemble takes the stage in the new $100 million Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda. (Paul Gordon Emerson - For The Washington Post)

It's unbelievable, breathtaking, especially once you step inside the hall itself," says Douglas M. Duncan, the Montgomery County executive who has been a leading force behind the $100 million Music Center at Strathmore. "Montgomery County will be a different place on Feb. 6, the day after it opens."

As Duncan sees it, the Music Center, which includes a world-class, 1,976-seat concert hall as well as an expansive educational facility, "will provide opportunities for our residents that we have never had before, and we'll be a much richer place because of what's happening at Strathmore."

The happening begins Saturday with a gala, invitation-only event, "The Music Begins: The Music Center at Strathmore Opening Celebration," featuring new resident partner the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and special guests including cellist Yo-Yo Ma. On Monday, the 19th annual Washington Area Music Awards debut there, and on Tuesday, Dr. John and the Nighthawks bring a little Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras spirit to Rockville before the BSO returns Thursday with a pops concert.

Galas, parties, concerts -- all signal the arrival of what Eliot Pfanstiehl, president and chief executive of Strathmore, calls "the culmination of a vision to establish a dynamic, world-class performing arts and education center under one roof."

The roof that covers the Music Center at Strathmore is a softly undulating one that takes its cues from its surroundings, 11 acres of gently rolling hills near the Capital Beltway (Interstate 495) and I-270 and just off one of the busiest of metropolitan arteries, Rockville Pike. At night, when the lights inside the vast, six-story glass wall of the Music Center's north lobby are lit, it looks like a glowing topaz on a hill.

Certainly it's a gem, from the same team -- William Rawn Associates Architects Inc. of Boston, acousticians Kirkegaard Associates of Chicago and Theatre Projects Consultants of South Norwalk, Conn. -- that designed the acclaimed Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

What you see from Rockville Pike is merely the setting of a jewel -- the true enormousness of the 190,000-square-foot building isn't revealed until you look at it from behind, or from Tuckerman Lane. The Music Center at Strathmore will be the largest single performance space in Montgomery County, serving a growing population of nearly 1 million people, but it's also going to change the landscape of the greater Washington area, bringing to suburbia a cultural cache that has heretofore resided downtown.

According to Pfanstiehl, the potential base audience is actually closer to 3 million, "Montgomery County first and foremost, but also Prince George's, Frederick, Northern Virginia and Northwest Washington." All are within easy access by car, bus or Metro: Parking is available in the 1,500-space garage at the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro station, which connects to the Music Center via a covered sky bridge walkway.

As for the home county, Pfanstiehl defines it as "high education; high disposable income; high history and interest in live performing arts, one of the highest in the country; a heavy attender base, but the farther they're going out the less they're keeping that downtown habit. We think that's a growing and willing market right there."

And it's no diamond in the rough, says Neale Perl, president of the Washington Performing Arts Society, another of the Music Center's partner organizations. While some people may have had modest expectations because the Music Center is a county- and state-funded facility in the suburbs, not downtown, "they're going to be overwhelmed at the beauty and acoustic excellence of the venue, and it will make them want to come back again and again. It's a miracle that it happened, and the greater D.C. community is the beneficiary."

Though Strathmore will do much of its own booking via a Strathmore Signature Series featuring a mix of Broadway and cabaret, jazz, funk, folk and family shows, the Music Center's two partners are significant. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will claim 40 nights per year at the center, and WPAS, one of the leading arts presenters in America, will include the Music Center as one of its key performance venues, offering a mix of classical music, jazz, gospel, contemporary dance and international music.

The BSO presence will make it the only major American orchestra to have homes in two metropolitan areas, and Washington the only city to have two full-time, full-size, top-class symphony orchestras offering programs every week. In addition, the National Philharmonic (created when the National Chamber Orchestra and Masterworks Chorus merged) will be the resident chamber orchestra and chorus. Though the 150 performances expected each year will include all genres, classical music is expected to occupy 40 to 50 percent of the programming.

"People ask us if we're trying to out-Kennedy Center the Kennedy Center," Pfanstiehl says. "Quite the contrary, we're depending on the Kennedy Center to be exactly what it is, and more of what it is -- a world stage presenting world-class acts. That's wonderful.

"But it is where it is and it is what it is," he adds. "This building and this whole program, including the education and performance under one roof, the partnership with the BSO, it's all built to fill in what the Kennedy Center isn't. It is a warm and intimate space. With Metro, 270 and 495, it is incredibly convenient to this sector of the metropolitan area. It has five resident organizations and a founding partner with the BSO, who wouldn't have been seen otherwise in this market.