A New Era:  The Max M. Fisher Music Center

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra entered a new era on October 11, 2003 with the opening of the Max M. Fisher Music Center. The $60 million project, nicknamed “The Max,” created a new music center complex consisting of the restored and modernized Orchestra Hall and a 135,000-square-foot facility that includes The Music Box, a 450-seat second performance hall with variable configurations, and the 15,000-square-foot Jacob Bernard Pincus Music Education Center, which supports the DSO’s youth ensembles and other educational activities.

An important component of the Orchestra Place was the completion of the hall restoration process begun in 1970, which included the installation of an historically accurate iron awning and marquee, as recreated from early photographs.

The opening of The Max marks the completion of Phase II of the three-phase Orchestra Place Development Project launched in 1996. To support the refurbished Orchestra Hall, Phase II also includes a new 18,000-square-foot back-of-house facility with dressing rooms, space for instrument and equipment storage, and two floors of administrative support space. There is 17,000-square-feet of lobby space, featuring a soaring four-story atrium.

Phase III, completed in 2005, is the Detroit School for the Arts. Situated next to The Max, the new $122.5 million “magnet” public high school and broadcast technology complex is part of a unique partnership between the DSO, the Detroit Public Schools System and Detroit Public Television. The school features a state-of-the-art digital telecommunications center with production studios, and broadcast studios for WDTR-FM, the radio station of the school system.