With a grand sweep of his right hand befitting a triumphant conductor, Dr. Ronald Caltabiano gestures to the glorious curves that grace the Holtschneider Performance Center at the DePaul University School of Music. Architectural glissandos ring out everywhere, including the upper-level overhangs that hug 500-seat Gannon Concert Hall and the church-like windows that look out onto the Chicago campus. The building hums with a palpable energy that seems to quicken his step.

But while DePaul’s music school dean is charged with overseeing this $98 million, 185,000-square-foot jewel, he could pass for an instructor or perhaps even a grad student, such is his exuberance. On this spring afternoon, he’s carrying around a large bound score dappled with a rainbow of sticky notes (his own orchestral composition, “Concertini”), all the while chatting up students, teachers and staff with warm, winning informality. You might never guess that Caltabiano is a three-time graduate of The Julliard School and a lauded composer whose works have been played all over the world, earning praise as “a remarkable synthesis of modernism and romanticism, of violence and lyricism, of integrity and accessibility.”