400 Musicians Just Want a Roof Over Their Heads : Recitals: Cal State Long Beach students are lugging instruments to churches, the library and even the Queen Mary, as good acoustics and a reliable piano become scarce.

This fall, Cal State Long Beach music student Vickie Reed had planned to walk into the university’s Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall and, before her family, friends and teachers, give a performance that would mark the culmination of years of hard work.

Instead, she is now scrambling about town for a place with a concert grand piano and good acoustics.

After the collapse of the hall last month and the closing of five more buildings in the music complex last week, Reed is not the only student in search of a spot to play music. When classes begin Sept. 4, about 400 music students in the larger performing groups will be lugging instruments to local churches, the main library downtown and even the Queen Mary.

“We’re really rather frantically trying to find rehearsal places,” said Prof. Michael Carson, director of the university’s opera program. “It’s a huge crisis, you just can’t imagine.”

“Teaching is just going to be a nightmare,” added Prof. Edith Hirshtal, who teaches piano.

Donald Para, music department chairman, said late last week that he is confident there will be enough teaching and rehearsal rooms found on and off campus before classes start. About a half-dozen churches have volunteered space, the downtown library will make room for musicians in its auditorium and the Queen Mary has offered a ballroom for a major opera production in November, Para said.

“The community has been very supportive,” said Prof. Richard Birkemeier, director of the Brass Ensemble. “You find out who your friends are when the going gets rough--and it has gotten rough.”

The roof of the recital hall collapsed July 2. Normally used for rehearsals and performances, the hall was empty when 120 tons of concrete and steel crashed down. Officials immediately closed off another rehearsal hall and a third building with faculty offices and a storage area for music equipment.

Last week, the experts investigating the collapse of the recital hall decided to shut down five more buildings in the music complex, saying the 8-year-old structures would not withstand a major earthquake.

The engineers determined that five of the tallest buildings in the complex, including a 70-seat lecture hall, were unsound because the side walls were inadequately built to support the buildings’ 16-foot height.

The cause of the hall’s cave-in remains a mystery, but of equal mystery is why past inspections of the other buildings did not reveal the structural deficiencies that led to their closing this week.

Para said many of the 3,000 music students who are not in the larger performing groups will be transferred to classrooms throughout campus.

“I’m sure we’re going to have some difficulties in the fall. There’ll be some confusion,” Para said.

Adding to the inconvenience of traveling across campus or to a nearby church will be problems posed by impromptu rooms not designed for music classes, Para and others said.

“The fact that they won’t be practicing and rehearsing in places designed for music will be difficult,” Para said.

Pianists, for example, need larger rooms, said Hirshtal, the piano professor.

She said practicing pianists have been left with just a few small rooms, in which most of the pianos are inadequate. When the roof of the hall collapsed, it came tumbling down on the two grand pianos that students had used to give their recitals.

“I hate to teach in those rooms,” Hirshtal said about the small chambers. “You can’t hear what you’re doing. Some of those pianos are so bad that students call them ‘piano-shaped objects.’ ”

Reed, the student looking for a place to hold her senior recital, said of the practice rooms left: “It’s like performing in a bathroom.”

Music student Esme Vera, another pianist, said she has been practicing six hours a day to prepare for her much-anticipated junior recital, originally scheduled next month. Now, she does not know where she will hold it. In the meantime, because she doesn’t have her own piano, she also must scurry about to find a good piano to practice on.

Hirshtal said she is “really worried about morale. These are not kids who are rich, like those at USC. They don’t have wonderful pianos at home.”

With the exception of the recital hall, the buildings are expected to reopen next year, perhaps in the spring, Para said.

Until then, Para said, students and instructors will do the best they can with what’s available.

Janet Walker, a graduate student, said she can live with the inconveniences if it means the university is taking needed precautions.

“Any inconvenience that there might be is secondary if there’s a chance the buildings are unsafe,” said Walker, an opera singer. “I really appreciate that they’re closing them down.”

That does not soften the blow for those who have been hard hit by the mysterious cave-in of the recital hall.

“I’m extremely worried,” said Reed, who has been playing piano since age 4. “I’ve worked my whole life for this (recital), and now I have no idea where I’m going to do it.”