SOUTH HADLEY — Berkshire Hills Music Academy hosts 140 music lessons a week. That’s 28 a day, all done in four hours. That’s a lot for five practice rooms.

With the ribbon-cutting of the new Bernon Music Center on the school’s campus Thursday afternoon, the practice space has expanded, and along with it comes a state-of-the-art recording studio and performance space.

“We’ve grown so much over the past three years, four years that we’ve outgrown our current building,” said Michelle Theroux, the school’s executive director. “A performance hall for the school has always been a dream of the school as well of the founders and board, so today makes that a reality.”

The center, named after founder Kay Bernon, also has offices for faculty, classroom space and a teaching kitchen.

“This is like a rebirth,” Bernon said before the ribbon-cutting. “It gives us renewed energy for the staff, gives more promises for the students and the building is so beautiful.”

To build the 8,000-square-foot facility, the school has raised nearly $3.2 million. Theroux said they are about 8 percent from their fundraising goal.

It will still be a week or so before the building opens for use as the finishing touches still need to be installed.

The postsecondary school uses music as a tool to help individuals with disabilities develop life skills. More than 55 students from all over the country study at the South Hadley school. The campus is just minutes from Mount Holyoke College.

“For 17 years, the residential and educational program in our great building has been incredible, but we have grown, so logistics became quite a challenge,” Bernon said to the crowd who had come to celebrate the occasion. “In some ways, this opening of Bernon Music Center feels like the first day. A second life beginning. The impact of the mission and the philosophy will be doubled with this expansion.”

Here, she said, everyone is seen for their abilities, not disabilities.

“This building signifies many things, like belonging, welcoming, highlighting, polishing, self-discovery, achieving, sharing, enhancing, all with and because of music,” she said.

Guests, students, faculty and local officials mingled about the space while the school’s nine-member Performance Troupe provided music for the occasion. Singing duets, soloing on the saxophone and playing the Peruvian pan-pipes, the students showed off their musical prowess.

Inside the space that will become the teaching kitchen, 23-year-old Ben Krifka, of Amherst, pointed to the rendering of the space’s finished look.

Krifka said cooking was “really easy” but that skill came from classes he took at the academy. He said he is looking forward to taking more cooking classes.

“I love to cook pasta and meatballs,” he said.

When not in the kitchen, Krifka is taking dance and voice lessons. While his favorite dance is salsa, he gets a mix of everything in his class.

Looking over the soundboard in the studio, Alex Mody said he was looking forward to using the space to record his own music and work on his DJ mixing.

Mody, 21, of Granby, recently graduated from the school’s two-year certificate program, whose goal is to transition students into a more independent lifestyle.

A talented pianist and drummer, Mody said he wants to be a DJ when he grows up.

Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.

]]>