Opening night in 1878 was a performance of Gluck's Alceste and Beethoven's Eroica for an audience of six thousand. One hundred and fifty years, a few restorations, and a 2017 renovation later, this is still the concert hall it was built to be, and still one of the most imposing wedding buildings in the country.
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A Concert Hall, Briefly Yours
Samuel Hannaford designed Music Hall in 1876 and the building opened in 1878 as the largest auditorium in America (5,228 seats, until Chicago's Auditorium Building overtook it in 1889). The 2017 restoration preserved the Gothic-Romanesque exterior while retuning Springer Auditorium's capacity to between 2,200 and 2,500 seats for better acoustics. The building houses the Cincinnati Symphony, the Cincinnati Opera, the May Festival, and the Cincinnati Ballet.
For weddings the four relevant rooms are Corbett Tower (originally Dexter Hall, used by the College of Music of Cincinnati until 1972, now a 300-person seated space with Gilded Age decorative plaster), the Music Hall Ballroom (added in 1927, renovated 1998, nearly 20,000 square feet, up to 1,300), Springer Auditorium itself for on-stage ceremonies, and the Wilks Studio for small events.
Corbett Tower is the wedding room most couples actually book. The Ballroom is the reception room. The hierarchy matters for how we plan the day.
Project String Quartet was founded by Rebecca Hamilton, a conservatory-trained violinist. The roster she leads has played 500+ Midwest weddings, including Cincinnati-area weddings. The ensemble holds a 5.0 Google rating across those events. Beyond classical repertoire, PSQ plays Bridgerton-style pop arrangements that fit a venue of this scale without sounding out of place in a room designed for symphony orchestras. If you're weighing music options, our string quartet vs. DJ guide and complete ceremony music guide cover the tradeoffs plainly.
Room By Room
Restored Gilded-Age plasterwork, chandelier in the center, a room that loves acoustic strings. Lively but not reverberant, which means we can use full dynamic range, true pianissimo at the start of the processional, true fortissimo at the peak of the recessional. Amplification is not part of the conversation.
Twenty thousand square feet and capacity for over a thousand means this is the biggest room we play in Cincinnati. The 1927 and 1998 work left it with hard surfaces and long reverberation. For ceremonies here we recommend the house AV team add light reinforcement through the Music Hall system; for dinner music we play fully acoustic to the head table area only.
If the ceremony is on the Springer stage (a small number of weddings each year), we sit where the orchestra sits and play into the acoustic shell. That shell is tuned for a seventy-piece orchestra, which flatters four instruments in interesting ways, the room adds a sense of depth the quartet does not produce alone.
Music Hall's resident companies lock in their calendars months ahead. Check your date now before the window closes.
Check Your DateEnsemble Fit
Violin + Cello
Fine for a Wilks Studio rehearsal dinner or private mezzanine event. Not recommended for any of the three main rooms.
Request QuoteViolin, Violin + Cello
Works for Corbett Tower at smaller guest counts and for cocktail hour adjacent to the Ballroom. The Ballroom itself, and Springer, need the quartet.
Request Quote2 Violins + Viola + Cello
The default here. The building was designed around full orchestras; a quartet is the scale it takes to sound fully present in any of these rooms. The investment in classical repertoire this building represents deserves the ensemble that actually plays it. Use the playlist builder to start choosing your processional and recessional pieces.
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Tell us about your event at Cincinnati Music Hall and we'll send a personalized quote.
Send us the date and the room. Music Hall slots work around the resident companies' calendars, so the earlier we see a date the better the answer we can give.
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