A New Production from Walker West Music Academy
The storied music education center has a state-of-the-art new home
By Chris Hudson | June 18, 2025
With drapes drawn, Walker West’s multipurpose space functions like a black box theater. Photo by Peter VonDeLinde.
PROJECT GALLERY
What would become Walker West Music Academy got its start in 1988, when Reverend Carl Walker and Grant West began offering piano lessons with a rented piano in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood. This past spring, Walker West moved into a new home, its first to be designed for its unique mix of programming. The dynamic renovation of an 18,600-square-foot building on Marshall Avenue includes a lobby and lounge, classrooms, offices, a recording studio, a tech lab, a meeting room, and a skylit multipurpose space. This fall, construction will begin on the second phase of the project: a 200-seat performance hall at the west end of the building.
To shape a music center imbued with Black cultural history, Walker West assembled a project team that included Locus Architecture, interior design firm FMYH, and general contractor Noor Companies, among the other firms listed below. A photo mural wrapping the welcome desk spotlights the founders and an array of young Walker West musicians; additional walls are lined in black-and-white murals by acclaimed artist Shantell Martin. In one of the main corridors, the design inspiration takes architectural form.
Photos 1–11: Lobby, lounge, meeting room, classrooms, kitchen, restroom, tech lab, recording studio, and multipurpose space. Photos by Peter VonDeLinde. Photo 12: Colorful exterior. Photo by Locus Architecture. Site plan: The second phase will add a performance hall and an outdoor performance stage and playground. Plan by Locus Architecture.
“Our muse for the floor plan was the ‘call and response’ tradition in African and African American music and singing,” says Locus Architecture principal Wale Falade, AIA, NOMA. “We used that idea in the classroom corridor by pushing and pulling the walls in and out, which has the added benefit of improving acoustics.”
Walker West students and patrons have more to look forward to with the state-of-the-art performance hall slated to open next year. For now, the multipurpose space at the center of the building is the performance hub—and much more.
“[Walker West executive director] Braxton Haulcy describes the performance hall as the crown jewel and the multipurpose space as the more informal, social space,” says Falade. “For the latter, we took the footprint of the existing dining room, carved it out a bit, added skylights, and installed operable shades and wood elements. With the shades drawn, the multipurpose space offers an intimate jazz-lounge or black-box-theater environment for community events. But with double doors on both sides, you can pass through even during a rehearsal or performance. It’s a space that connects every other space in the building.”
Stay tuned to ENTER for additional coverage of the two-phase Walker West Music Academy project. The Walker West project team included Locus Architecture, FMYH, Victus Engineering, MBJ, Pierce Pini + Associates, Schuler Shook, Assembly, Noor Companies, and Greiner Construction.
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