The Colburn School in Downtown Los Angeles is set to open a brand new concert hall on Sept 25, 2027. Designed to accommodate a full orchestra, the 1,000 seat venue will occupy a unique space in the city’s performing arts landscape: large enough to support major orchestral performances while maintaining the intimacy often lost in larger concert halls.
building in Downtown Los Angeles under
construction. Courtesy of Colburn © Captis Lucem Photography
Named for two Southern California entrepreneurs and philanthropists, the Terri and Jerry Kohl Hall is the newest and largest addition to the school in years, clocking in at 100,000 square feet and offering 1,000 seats for guests. While the hall will be the permanent home of the Colburn Orchestra, it will also serve as a venue for resident artists including the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO), visiting musicians, and local performing arts companies. Alongside the hall, the new building will include a Dance Center complete with five studios and a rooftop garden.
Los Angeles has no shortage of concert halls or music venues, however, this more intimate setting can be harder to come by. While being significantly smaller compared to The Walt Disney Concert Hall and The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the surrounding areas, this new addition is sure to be a welcome addition for students and attendees alike.
“Performance spaces and concert halls are grounds for the human spirit to be nurtured and uplifted through the musical lens. With the new hall, there will of course be a wider range of performance opportunities and new explorations for integrating all kinds of artistic excellence beyond just the scope of the institution,” said Steven Lu, a third year violinist in Colburn’s Conservatory of Music. He, like many others, believes these spaces don’t only offer a musical escape, but foster a community where creativity and artistry can thrive unadulterated. “A new hall for the Colburn School means so much more than just a space for us as musicians to make music in. It means a new space for the community to gather, to witness all kinds of music, and to unequivocally be ourselves,” Steven added.
This expansion will be an integral part in Colburn students being able to practice niche styles and branches of classic music such as chamber music more comfortably. The intimate nature of the hall allows for this as the music style itself is designed to be performed by fewer musicians, without conduction, in a smaller environment. However, the hall will create a significant artistic impact on not only students, but on Downtown Los Angeles itself. “I think it is tremendously important for Los Angeles to now have another venue like Kohl Hall to be another hallmark of artistic excellence in Downtown Los Angeles.The music making in Downtown Los Angeles will without a doubt be at its most generous and innovative,” Steven expressed.
Interior of the 1,000-seat Terri and Jerry Kohl located on the West end of the project site. Courtesy of Frank O. Gehry & Gehry Partners, LLP
When speaking about the concentration of concert halls in the downtown area, there is a name tied to many significant buildings in the collection; Frank Gehry. Gehry was a prolific Canadian-American architect who sadly passed away on December 5, 2025, at the age of 96. He is responsible for designing some of LA’s most renowned and recognizable buildings such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Grand, the Binoculars Building in Venice, and even sections of the Loyola Law School campus. His designs always focused on practicality and post modernism. Having designed many concert halls, he was obsessive over the relationship between the performers on stage and the audience. According to Meaghan Lloyd, the Chief of Staff at the Gehry Partners, Gehry’s main focus was “bringing the audience closer to the performers and getting the relationship between the two just right, so that the audience can feel the performers, the performers can feel the audience reacting.” This new concert hall marks the largest cluster of Gehry-designed buildings in the world.
Frank Gehry-designed Terri and Jerry Kohl
Hall under construction in Downtown Los
Angeles. Courtesy of Colburn © Captis Lucem Photography
Known for using unconventional materials and extravagant designs, Gehry’s concert hall will feature specific design construction choices such as a spectrum of steel cloud-like panels lining the ceiling. These will be used to improve acoustics and redirect sound back onto the audience, ensuring the audio doesn’t become too muddled while maintaining a sense of airiness as to give the audience a more dynamic experience.
A gala concert will officially kick off the opening of the hall on Sept. 25, 2027. Opening weekend festivities will continue across multiple student dance performances and a formal ribbon-cutting opening ceremony. The opening season will include performances by the Colburn Orchestra along with commissions supported and curated by Grammy and Academy Award-nominated artist Seth MacFarlane, in partnership with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. These concerts will feature premieres of new fanfares by celebrated film composers, including works by John Williams. Colburn’s busy schedule is sure to satisfy music and live performance fans alike.
