A New Home For Music

Apartments for over 400 student-musicians, learn about living on campus. As well as housing for students at the San Francisco Ballet School, short term housing for visiting faculty and guest performers, and apartments for tenants of the building previously on the site of the Bowes Center. Residential amenities for students include a student center with social and study spaces, dining from Chef Loretta Keller, known for her work at San Francisco’s Coco500, and acoustically isolated apartments that allow for practicing.

State-of-the-art music education facilities, including acoustically controlled classrooms and practice rooms, a keyboard lab, recording studio, and the Center for New Media featuring critical listening rooms for Technology and Applied Composition and Roots, Jazz, and American Music students.

Additional building highlights include a flexible event space and terrace on the top two floors of the building and offices for faculty, staff of Opus 3 Artists, and broadcasting facilities for KDFC Classical Radio. The Bowes Center was developed with the environment in mind, and anticipates the new building will reduce annual energy costs by 16.9%. Learn more about the Bowes Center green initiatives.

The jewel-box Cha Chi Ming Recital Hall on the ground floor has seating for over 100 audience members, featuring sprung floors to meet the needs of dancers and performances that require high elasticity on the stage. Visible to all passers-by through floor to ceiling windows that extend to the second floor with views of Van Ness Avenue and Hayes Street.

The 200-seat Barbro Osher Recital Hall on the 11th floor features floor-to-ceiling glass walls offering views overlooking a spectacular vista of City Hall, Davies Symphony Hall, the War Memorial Opera House, and other Civic Center landmarks.

The black box Technology Hall is a multipurpose performance and workshop space for multimedia projects and productions developed primarily by the Technology and Applied Composition department. The adjacent recording room includes state-of-the-art recording equipment that directly interfaces with all of the Bowes Center’s performance spaces.

Bill and Ute Bowes have been longtime supporters of SFCM and dedicated trustees for many decades. Bill Bowes first made a name for himself as a pioneer in venture capitalism and was a long-time philanthropist to the arts. His inspiring leadership and generous financial contributions to SFCM have helped the school to become a beacon of conservatory education. In his own words he shared this simple fact, “Music makes me happy!” Sadly, he passed away in late 2016.

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