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Stage is set for capital's first new concert hall in 26 years
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent29.04.08
The first concert hall to open in London since the Barbican in 1982 will be launched in October with a festival of 100 musical events.
The 420-seat venue is part of Kings Place, the next stage of the transformation of King's Cross after the reopening of St Pancras station.
The development in York Way has just been handed over to the owners by contractor Sir Robert McAlpine for internal fitting to begin.
The 26,000 square metre building is due to be finished for the formal opening on 1 October. It will include a sculpture space and studios, a second performance hall and seven floors of office space for up to 3,000 workers.
Network Rail and The Guardian newspaper will make it their headquarters. The London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment will also do so, although they will remain resident orchestras at the Southbank Centre. Only the top floor is still unlet.
There will be a café in the atrium and a bar and restaurant along the waterfront next to Battlebridge Basin.
The building has been designed by architects Dixon Jones, whose work includes transforming the Royal Opera House, on environmentally sustainable terms.
Peter Millican, director of developer Parabola Land and now chief executive officer of the Kings Place Music Foundation, which will run the arts programme, said: "I think that having arts in a building makes it more interesting for the tenants - and we're offering something for the community."
The programme will include talks, contemporary music, jazz and chamber music. The first year will have weeks dedicated to operas by Haydn and Mozart, eight weeks of Beethoven recitals, and a week of music at Christmas inspired by Roald Dahl stories.
The opening festival, from 1 to 5 October, will include appearances by the Brodsky Quartet, Iain Burnside, the F-ire jazz collective and the Endymion Ensemble.
Kings Place is near, but independent of, the 67-acre Argent development at the heart of King's Cross, which is also integrating the arts - Central St Martins art college is due to move there in 2011.
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St Luke's is a rehearsal room. There are few absolutely terrific small concert halls in London (a city well known for its previously mediocre hall acoustics). A new, modern, technologically equipped and acoustically excellent hall is perfect for the current music scene. Bravo to the developers.
- David Taylor, Bridgewater, CT USA
London has seven small concert halls and apart from one - Wigmore Hall - they are empty most of the time. LSO St Luke's relies on conferences to keep going and hosts very few concerts at all - but the few it hosts are good.
King's Place seems a bit pointless when you take an overview - just how many empty concert halls does London need?
- Brian Keane, London
And this benefits the "average This Is Londoner reader" exactly how?
- Fraser, Telford Park
