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Music facilities

Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall is our impressive centrepiece, and is complemented by our Arthur Sykes Rymer Auditorium, one of the finest listening spaces for reproduced sound in the United Kingdom. We have a range of rehearsal spaces, teaching rooms, practice spaces and studios. 

Classes often take place in the concert hall or in studio spaces. One-to-one tuition and instrumental lessons are usually in practice or seminar rooms. During the busiest times of the year, students can be found rehearsing across every corner of the School.

Our six music studio spaces mirror industry standards. They feature a variety of analogue and digital systems, and multiple surround sound configurations for modern and traditional production workflows. Several have links to our performance spaces, too. 

Contact us

Get in touch with our events team for more details or a quote for any of our spaces.

At York, the facilities are truly like no other university. Our on-site concert hall, seminar rooms, studio spaces and many practice rooms show how York prioritise creative music making and academic approaches to study. So far this academic year, I have been performing and rehearsing in the concert hall several times a week!

Holly, BA Music. Read Holly's blog post

350-seat concert hall
We're lucky to have our very own performance space, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall right here on campus.
Ron Cooke Hub
The Hub includes a spacious atrium and café. It has music teaching rooms and rehearsal spaces with pianos available for practice, and a newly-integrated recording studio.
Music at York
From choral to jazz, gospel to gamelan - almost every kind of music is performed here

Performance venues

Studios

Practice spaces

We offer a range of well-equipped rehearsal spaces and 28 practice rooms in the Jack Lyons building on Campus West and the Ron Cooke Hub on Campus East. Each rehearsal space has a piano and access to chairs and music stands. Our pianos include:

  • Three Steinway grand pianos
  • A Fazioli grand piano
  • A Blüthner grand piano
  • Two Yamaha grand pianos
  • A Disklavier
  • A recently refurbished mid-19th century Érard grand piano
  • Schimmel upright pianos.

The practice rooms are open from early morning through to late evening seven days a week. On occasion, the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall is also available for student rehearsals.

Libraries and archives

  • The John Paynter Music Library (part of the main University Library) houses the central music collections and also has digital pianos and media replay equipment.
  • The Library also houses an extensive collection of CDs and DVDs available for listening and research.
  • Students also have access to York Minster Library which has an impressive collection of music manuscripts and early printed sources.
  • The University of York Sound Archives (UYSA) has a collection of sound recordings, specialising in non-commercial, off-air and unreleased recordings.

Instruments

Loans of certain orchestral, historical or non-Western instruments are available to all our Music students. Our wide range of instruments includes:

  • a range of pianos
  • a full organ by Grant, Degens and Bradbeer
  • Renshaw chamber organ
  • a range of harpsichords, fortepianos and other historical instruments
  • an array of orchestral instruments
  • instruments from across the world including: a Javanese gamelan ensemble, Ghanaian ewe drums, Japanese shakuhachi and much more.
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Contact us

Get in touch with our events team for more details or a quote for any of our spaces.