Music Center At Strathmore
The Music Center at Strathmore is located at 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, Maryland USA. It was opened to public on February 5, 2005 with the seating capacity of 1,976 occupants.

Since the opening apart from being the concert hall the Music Center Strathmore has been used as a perfect place to host the weddings, private parties and black-tie galas, the venue for the pre-concert and post-concert receptions, product launches, corporate meetings, television broadcasts, meetings, workshops, and training sessions.

It is also acts as a state-of-the-art multidisciplinary education center offering the world-class performing arts education to the masses. Strathmore is located immediately adjacent to the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro station, on the Red Line.

Following the walkway out of the metro station and going to the left entrance of the Metro Garage while taking the stairs or elevators to the 4th level one can come across the Music Center"s main entrance while walking across the sky bridge.

The Metro Bus Routes J5 and the other bus routes like 6, 37, 46 and 96 all brings people to Music Center Strathmore. The venue is located half miles at the north side of Capital Beltway (I-495) Outer Loop the patrons can drive to Strathmore via this route.

Strathmore for the convenience and guidance of community also offers free walk-in tours of the Music Center by the trained docents twice a week.

These tours do not require reservations and includes a thirty minute comprehensive tour of the concert hall and education center featuring the description of architectural design of the building, customer amenities, program and resident partner information, and it also includes a glimpse of the backstage areas.

The founding partners of this Music Center are Strathmore and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra while the resident artistic partners are National Philharmonic, Washington Performing Arts Society, CityDance Ensemble, Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras, and Levine School of Music.

This music center was opened with the concept to provide a modern concert venue for a wide variety of musical events and it successfully presents over 150 performances a year and over 75 arts and music education classes each week.

The vision of many officials to provide the community with a bigger music and education center became a reality when, in 1998, the Montgomery County Council and the Maryland State Legislature each approved the capital support of $48 million for the Music Center at Strathmore.

After that the design team; including the architect firm William Rawn Associates Architects, Inc., Boston, acoustician Kirkegaard Associates, Chicago, the theater consultants Theatre Projects Consultants, South Norwalk and the associate architect firm Grimm & Parker Architects, Bethesda, was selected in 2001 and the work to complete the music center began under the direction of the county.

This was the same team that designed the Ozawa hall at Tanglewood and the results were equally good. The Concert Hall was again designed in the shoe box pattern featuring state-of-the-art adjustable acoustics making it pitch perfect for non-amplified events and tunable for amplified pop, folk, jazz, blues, and world music.

A sprung dance floor and wide-hinged wing doors were adjusted to make the venue perfect for dance. A stunning ambiance of warmth and peace was created by the design team while using the white birch and bronze metal grillage walls, maple floors, clear maple and aubergine velour seats, and red birch accents.

In addition to the 1,976 seats accessible seating is available at all levels. The Marriott Concert Stage holds the spacious area of 3,075 square feet. The downstage is 68 feet wide while the upstage is 56 feet wide and the center line is 50 feet deep.

There is a Maestro Dressing Suite, three soloist dressing rooms, a green room for artists and guests and twelve changing and warm-up rooms with lockers, shower and restroom facilities. There are two production offices and a ticket office with three service windows in the venue.

The parking facility for Music Center Strathmore is at the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro garage off of Tuckerman Lane. This facility is complimentary for ticketed events of the Music Center's Concert Hall.

At the end of each ticketed event the exit gates to the garage are opened for 30 minutes to exit the garage. There is also the facility of valet parking with the cost of $15 per vehicle while the valet drop off and pick up the attendants at the Circle Plaza entry to the Music Center at Strathmore at Tuckerman Lane.

With the guiding principles of devotion to artistic excellence, dedicated to education and committed to community Music Center at Strathmore is considered as a "first class space for music-making."