Not three weeks ago, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra (ASO) celebrated the grand opening of the Stella Boyle Smith Music Center, its first official home. Located in the East Village neighborhood near Heifer International and the Clinton Presidential Center, the facility’s grounds and performance hall were filled with music throughout the three-day event. The weekend’s lineup featured ASO musicians, the ASO Community Orchestra and ASO Youth Orchestra, plus the St. Mark Baptist Sanctuary Choir and Ozark Fiddlers.
According to ASO CEO Christina Littlejohn, the blend of professional and amateur musicians and genres was intentional, a microcosm of the potential of the new space.
“For the grand opening, it was so important to me to have different kinds of music being performed, because that’s what the music center is for,” Littlejohn says. “Our goal with this space is for it to be a radically welcoming hub of musical activity for all Arkansans. It’s a space where people can make music together and build community that way.”
To her point, ASO musicians are already slated to play with the St. Mark’s choir during an upcoming Sunday service.
Littlejohn has also seen instant transformations for the ASO’s music academy. Home to three youth orchestras, a string academy and music-focused summer camps, the ASO had long outgrown its most recent center of operations in Byrne Hall at St. John’s Center, the headquarters of the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock.
“In the old space, we would have to give lessons in the storage room. We gave lessons outside. And sometimes, bats lived in that space,” Littlejohn laughs.
In the ASO’s new home, students have dedicated rehearsal rooms and parents have space to mingle and wait in the new center’s spacious lobby, a welcoming space that is just one standout feature in the 20,000-square-foot facility. Littlejohn’s favorite room is Morgan Hall, a practice and performance space designed to be both acoustically and aesthetically pleasing.
“Morgan Hall is absolutely stunning. Just stunning,” says Littlejohn, describing the thoughtfully designed wooden floors and walls and soaring ceilings.
While the ASO will continue to perform its Masterworks and Pops concert series at the Robinson Center downtown, they will have the capacity to perform some concerts at the Stella Boyle Smith Music Center, too. The more intimate, but no less popular River Rhapsodies concerts were the perfect place to start.
“We’ve been selling them out at the Clinton Library,” she says. “And by not having to pay for rent, we can afford to add a second show, so we’ll be doubling our chamber music series already.”
Morgan Hall opens up more creative options beyond the instant improvement for the music academy and seamless expansion of ASO’s chamber music calendar.
“I really want to try a series at 10 o’clock at night, like a post-concert series or a disco series or a jazz series,” shares Littlejohn, noting she and music director Geoffrey Robson have been busy brainstorming new offerings to bring to the community and the state. “It will make it much easier for us to be able to experiment in a fiscally responsible way. We’ve never been able to do that. The risk, the money that we’re spending to be able to take those risks is being used for musicians, which is why we exist to begin with.”
Another major feature of the new center is a recording and broadcasting studio. While excited for the music center as a whole, Robson cites this space as one with nearly unlimited potential.
“The possibilities that are presented through the combination of our recording studio and the performance hall are really endless,” Robson says. “I’m so excited to figure out all of these different functions and to really make it be known to the community at large that there’s this incredible resource for creativity and creation here in Little Rock.
“Right now my mind is racing with possibilities for different recording projects that we’ll be able to realize because we have our own equipment, we have our own space and state-of-the-art acoustic and technological capability.”
Connectivity was a major priority during the planning process, and both Robson and Littlejohn dream of the center enabling connection far beyond Little Rock. From a student learning with a remote teacher to hybrid meetings, the technology and space draw ASO toward collaboration.
“We hire these wonderful internationally renowned guest artists,” Littlejohn says, “and I’m thinking before they show up to Little Rock to play with the orchestra, they could do a master class with some of our kids. And when they come to perform, those students can get to meet them in person.”
Littlejohn’s biggest hope for the connectivity and recording capabilities is their potential to help develop the next generation of Arkansas musicians and composers.
“Little Rock is home to two composers whose music is performed by orchestras all across the country, William Grant Still and Florence Price. And in my dream world, we can start cultivating the next generation of William Grant Stills and Florence Prices.”
Littlejohn hopes ASO students will have the chance to work with composers from across the country, allowing them to build their own voices right in the Stella Boyle Smith Music Center.
“Their music can now be recorded, and it might make it easier for them to get into college, get their college scholarship or just hear how their music sounds being performed and work on it,” Littlejohn says. “That’s not going to happen anywhere else.”
It’s that openness to what the center will encourage that excites Littlejohn even about a large, unplanned space. She can envision the room housing a Little Rock children’s choir while also being used to expand the ASO’s adult education options.
“People could learn about music, about the music that we’re performing or get to know our musicians. That’s a space that will be really fun and easy for [lunchtime] brown bag performances or conversations with our music director,” Littlejohn says.
But the road to the ASO’s first permanent home was not an overnight journey. While construction on the center broke ground in August 2023, the process started about a decade ago with its $10 million dollar campaign officially kicking off in July 2019. And while all fundraising efforts take a clear vision and big dreams, those that spanned the COVID-19 pandemic required extra adaptability and patience.
“I think what’s important is just the resilience of our leadership team and the resilience of our donors,” Littlejohn says, and it took a lot of resilience to keep working toward that goal, especially in the pandemic’s early days. “In March of 2020, someone we asked for money even said, ‘I’m not committing to that. I’m not even sure there’ll be an orchestra at the end of the pandemic.’ And I was so distressed. I thought that can’t be true.”
Yet in the face of doubt, the ASO maintained a clear vision.
“We really kept our eye on the prize, which was keeping the orchestra together and keeping our local music intact and keeping our mission in place,” Robson says. “I think we emerged from [the pandemic] an even stronger organization, truthfully.”
In fact, it was the pandemic that inspired the ASO team to add the recording and broadcast studio to the final design plans for the center. While patrons sheltered in place, the ASO’s “Bedtime with Bach” series, shared on Facebook Live and created by ASO musicians, was viewed by nearly a million people worldwide and garnered national attention.
“When COVID shut everything down, we started having to get enormously creative with new methods of making music and making music accessible to the people. That helped sculpt our vision of connectivity for this new facility. We realized that going into the future, we are going to need to be able to access people through the internet and through broadcasting,” Robson says.
After adding the studio to the plans, the ASO faced a new fundraising goal of $11.75 million and skyrocketing post-pandemic prices. Yet the team pushed through thanks to generous donors and creative support from their builders and architects. Many families and organizations helped in the final fundraising push, including a $1.5 million challenge grant from the Windgate Foundation that met the ASO’s final $3 million commitment.
“That was a defining moment,” Littlejohn says. “And I give full credit to WER Architects and Bailey Construction for keeping our project within reach for us. They were working together to see what they could do to value engineer so that we could still afford to move forward.”
Because to Littlejohn, Robson and the ASO team, moving forward was the only option.
“It was like, what is our choice? We still need this building, right? I still have children taking lessons outside in the rain. I still have children taking lessons in a storage room,” she says. “So even if we’re tired, we still need this.”
As the successful fundraising campaign for the center comes to a close, the ASO is tuning up for a new era. With the new space comes new opportunities to expand its music education programs. That’s where its signature annual event, the Opus Ball, comes in.
“It is even more important now because there’s even more possibilities for programs. We have a space that will make it easier and more accessible for our kids,” shares Littlejohn, adding that all gala proceeds go toward music education, as is customary
This year, the festivities will kick off with the traditional patrons’ party held at the Stella Boyle Smith Music Center this month, followed by the grand ball in November at The Capital Hotel.
Fittingly, this year’s event will honor the ASO Board of Directors’ Life Members, a handful of long-time supporters who have consistently stepped in wherever needed, whether financially, by volunteering or in leadership positions.
“ASO is here because of individuals that gave selflessly for decades. I am continually humbled and amazed at the volunteer leaders of ASO. We only have a few Life Members because it’s a recognition reserved for people that put the orchestra and the community first,” Littlejohn says. “This music center is a reflection of the work and the dedication they put in over the course of their lives.”
For Robson, the ASO’s future is bright.
“It’s been truly remarkable what the organization has been able to accomplish without having a permanent home. And I think that our institutional knowledge combined with the new building is going to make for a launch pad of being able to spread the love and power of music in Little Rock and across the state of Arkansas,” he says. “It’s a really exciting time for us and for the community here, and I’m just honored and thrilled to be part of it.”
Littlejohn is also quick to share her gratitude.
“I’m so grateful that this community is generous,” she says. “I’m grateful to the leaders that helped get it done. I’m thankful for our musicians for doing all the programming that makes it possible for us to have kids that want to take lessons. I’m thankful for the opportunity to build community through music.”
But she’s also got her sights set firmly on the scope of possibility.
“To me the collaborations are endless.”
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