Moore Hall, "the Pink Palace," was recently demolished, closing a half-century chapter in Skidmore history. From its opening in 1958 as student housing in the heart of the downtown campus, until its closing in 2006, decades after the rest of the campus had moved to its North Broadway location, Moore was beloved by many students and enjoyed something of a cult following among alumni.

In front of the six-story, pink-stone housing unit, Moore included a dining hall with large glass walls looking onto Union Avenue. Though it was called "an architectural nightmare" by a former dean, Moore is remembered for late-night discussions, bathtubs and water fights, and rooftop hijinks about which one alum said, "I could not tell half the stories I'd like to without a really good lawyer present." Get more alumni stories in Scope here and on Facebook here, as well as in audio interviews here.

Moore went on the market in 2006 and sold in 2009, but the recession after 2008 kept its future in limbo. Now plans are under way for 26 row-house and other residential units, so the Pink Palace has been razed. Its huge cornerstone is slated for repatriation to Skidmore.

"Why is it so sonically satisfying," wondered music faculty member Patrice Malatestinic, "to play horn with oboe and bassoon?" To explore it, she and physics colleague Jill Linz presented "Conical Winds," a public concert featuring a piece that was specially arranged by Joshua Clayton '01 and presented visually on an oscilloscope.

As a student, Clayton music-directed more than a dozen Cabaret Troupe and other shows and focused his senior project on Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George. He now works for the New York City Center's Encores series, arranging scores for musical-theater revivals. For "Conical Winds," he prepared West Side Story's "Maria" to highight the sonorities of horn, oboe, and bassoon.

The concert began with Malatestinic joining oboist Randall Ellis, bassoonist Sue Daves, and pianist Todd Sisley (all professional musicians and Skidmore instructors) for several trios, both classical and modern. Next Linz showed how the oboe's relatively high pitch produces sound waves at a higher frequency: the peaks and valleys on an oscilloscope come closer together. The larger bassoon is lower-pitched, as seen in its wider waves. Just as light frequencies can be combined to mix primary colors into blended hues, Linz said, pitch and other sound qualities can be melded to achieve different timbres in music.

To cap the concert, Linz showed real-time sound waves while the musicians played Clayton's "Maria." Malatestinic was pleased how "the performers lovingly fitted together the lines Josh gave them, seamlessly in velvet." And the dancing green parabolas paralleled that beauty, sometimes pulsing more at the left or right, sometimes leaping in a bright burst, then smoothly flattening as the song ended. As Linz says, it was a way of "seeing sound in a whole new way."