Sound Room at The New Orleans Jazz Museum

A space for recording history leads the way for new cultural spaces at the New Orleans Jazz Museum.

Category Cultural
Adaptive Reuse + Modernization
Interiors
Unbuilt

Location New Orleans, LA

Year Phase 1 Complete, 2025

OPPORTUNITY

The New Orleans Jazz Museum, located in the historic U.S. Mint, is a global stage for jazz performance and education. Despite robust programming, including hosting world-class musicians and daily concerts, the museum lacked professional infrastructure to record and share performances at industry standards. Exhibits and site circulation also needed modernization to meet accessibility requirements and better connect audiences to the museum’s cultural mission. With growing demand from artists, students, and scholars, the institution saw an opportunity to expand its reach by transforming underutilized spaces and elevating its performance resources.

In collaboration with Perron and other specialized consultants, we developed a modernization master plan that includes three interconnected initiatives:

Third-Floor Recording Booth (Shown to left; Completed 2024): Working with the museum’s sound engineers and WSDG acousticians, TPA designed a 1,000 SF recording and engineering room adjacent to the performance hall. The space was designed to be congruent with the existing interiors (carousel images 1). Outfitted with Atmosound acoustic treatments, fabric-wrapped surfaces, isolated electrical systems, and custom maple millwork cut with no parallel surfaces (carousel image 4), the booth delivers pristine sound capture and professional-grade production. Additionally, we produced plans for a custom-milled sound control booth for the performance hall (carousel images 2-3), in keeping with the space's existing vernacular.

First-Floor Studio (Shown below; In fundraising phase): A larger, fully accessible recording space and control room is envisioned at the ground level. Integrated into public galleries, this studio will host residencies, workshops, and student programs, complementing the third-floor booth and expanding the museum’s recording capacity.

Trumpet Man Garden + Site Improvements: Exterior upgrades introduce ADA-compliant access, reworked paving, and new landscaping around Herb Alpert’s Trumpet Man sculpture. These interventions extend the museum outdoors, creating a welcoming civic space that bridges history and culture with contemporary use.

OUTCOME

The completed third-floor booth has already transformed the museum into a professional recording venue, enabling daily concerts to be recorded, streamed, and archived at industry standards. This capability preserves jazz history in real time, supports visiting artists, and powers Gallatin Street Records, amplifying the museum’s cultural reach. Once the first-floor studio and site improvements are realized, the museum will operate with a dual-platform recording system and revitalized public spaces. Together, these projects ensure the Jazz Museum remains both steward of jazz heritage and incubator of its future — a dynamic cultural hub where performance, education, and community converge.