USMs Crewe Center for the Arts prepares for August 2025 opening [Video]

Even now, almost a year from its opening date, the unfinished Crewe Center for the Arts is noticeably quiet despite blustery weather and traffic outside. That’s thanks to elaborate acoustic design baked into the walls – and just about every part – of the University of Southern Maine’s new music and arts center on its Portland campus.

“On a Wednesday night, you could come in here and be looking at art, and the Southern Maine Symphony Orchestra will be rehearsing in there, and you’d have no idea,” said Kyle Nielsen, director of USM’s Osher School of Music, standing in the partially constructed Great Hall Gallery. Its soaring central room has large glass windows and exposed timber beams that crisscross high above the gallery.

The forthcoming center is named for Bob and Dan Crewe. Bob Crewe’s music was a fixture of the ’60s. The songwriter behind many of The Four Seasons’ …