New age Sage

THE aim is to create a building nicknamed "the silver shell" where the world will come to hear a C major or minor in all its musical glory. The Sage Gateshead opens it's stunning glass Sir Norman Foster-designed doors to the public for the first time tomorrow when 1,400 people with free tickets will put the £70m building to the test.

And, after three hours, another 1,400 will replace the first revellers to observe how Northern Sinfonia's new home has finally taken shape.

In all 15,000 visitors will test the music centre to its limits, particularly at a time when the 250-space car park currently remains closed and thousands of extra vehicles will be using the region's busiest road junction next to the Tyne Bridge. Hopefully, parkers won't be halfway to Hebburn before they find somewhere to stop. Ros Rigby, performance programme director, explains that Norman Foster and Partners was chosen as the architects because the firm had a reputation for avoiding the "here's one we made earlier" designs.

"It was Foster's first-ever performing arts building in the world which has been a big responsibility on us because it meant they actually listened to us and said 'what do you want?'. So what we have know is a building that we, more or less, asked for. If the hall doesn't work you're sunk, but here we have a lot of flexibility with sound."

"Although we've had our moments along the way where we've shouted at each other at meetings, actually it's been a very productive partnership."

One of the first products of discussions back in the 1990s was to move the building from a site behind the Baltic Contemporary Art Gallery to an elevated area nearer the Tyne Bridge.

Not only was the idea inspired, but has created a "cultural walk circuit" which can also take in the Millennium Bridge and Newcastle's Quayside delights.

Jason Flanagan of Foster and Partners and Raj Patel of ArupAcoustics joined a party of arts and entertainment journalists to explain how the two firms collaborated to create the perfect music centre on the steeply sloping bank of the Tyne.

The Sage team visited the best two "shoe-box" concert halls in Europe - the Vienna Musikvereinssaal and Amsterdam's Concertgebouw - to ensure that the 1,700-seater Hall 1 would be a performer's paradise.

A stunning wooden design of birch with ash floors plus a sound-adjusting ceiling means that world-class artists are going to be intrigued and attracted.

Patel says: "The dimensions fundamentally shape the form and volume of the room and define what it will sound like.

You can't just take one box that works and make it bigger. Once you get to 2,000 and 2,500 capacity halls those bigger halls produce a patchier sound."

Flanagan adds: "We started the hall design from the inside out without really knowing anything else about what the rest of the building would be."

An important part of The Sage is producing live music, particularly for the acoustic, indie, country, world, folk, jazz, electronic, dance and classical audience. Even more essential is that sound quality is similar throughout The Sage ensuring that practice really can be perfect.

A musical mountain of planning allows live performance to move from a 26-room education centre, through the Northern Rock Foundation Hall rehearsal room to Hall 1 or the flexible 400-seat Chinese red lacquer Hall 2 - which is already being dubbed the Sage's sexy space.

Flanagan is delighted to report that not only can two articulated lorries off-load at once in the loading bay, but equipment is then wheeled across on the same level across the entire building.

It should actually be "buildings" because each hall and the glass roof, which requires the services of an abseiling window cleaner, is separated by a gap of a few millimetres to ensure that there are no good or bad vibrations passing through solid joints.

Even the main concourse, beside the glass-fronted view of the Tyne, will become a focal point for music festival performers throughout the year.

How the beautiful flooring and white-painted walls will cope with opening hours of up to 16 hours a day, 365 days a year, only quite a few minute waltzes will tell.

John McIlroy of Gateshead Council, which has now brought three international projects of Angel of the North, Baltic and Sage to the North-East, says: "People who really had no intention of coming in and attending a performance or buying a ticket will get an opportunity to look around and hopefully get sucked into this project. Hopefully, The Sage will engender respects for all types of music."

The unmusical flooding into the building can enjoy caf/bar and restaurant facilities, although the idea of meeting someone at The Sir Michael Straker Bar - named after the Northern Sinfonia stalwart - may seem a little daunting.

The public, with any luck, are about to go into rhapsodies about The Sage, and Ros Rigby comments: "It already feels like the venue has been open for a few years... it feels very comfortable."

And the comfort zone is going to have to include an estimated 750,000 visitors and around 400 performances in 2005, which is music to anyone's ears.

Published: 19/12/2004