 The Sage viewed from central Newcastle The Sage Gateshead is a new centre for musical education and performance, located in Gateshead on the south bank of the River Tyne, in the north-east of England.
Origins
The centre occupies a "curvy glass and stainless steel" building designed by Lord Foster, with spectacular views of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the Tyne Bridge, High Level Bridge and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. The planning and construction process that began in 1994 cost over £70 million, which was raised primarily through National Lottery grants. The centre has a range of patrons, notably The Sage Group plc (by whom the centre was named; the originally proposed title was 'Music Centre Gateshead') who contributed to the building's construction and sponsored its opening weekend.
The venue opened over the weekend 17th-19th December 2004. Rather than open in traditional fashion with a gala concert, the Sage offered free admission to an opening weekend showcasing a variety of performers in diverse styles, in keeping with its philosophy that no genre of music should be excluded from a venue intended as a public facility. (Local musician Sting did not open the venue or perform there during its opening, contrary to some rumours.)
The building
Interior view of the Sage The Sage building contains two concert halls, a 1,700- and a 400-seater. The rest of the building was designed around these two halls to allow for maximum attention to detail in their acoustic properties. Though its audience capacity is small by international standards, Hall One was intended as an acoustically perfect space, modelled on the renowned Musikverein in Vienna, and features ceiling panels that may be raised and lowered, changing the sound profile of the room to suit any type of music. Hall Two is an intimate venue, also acoustically excellent and possibly the world's only ten-sided performance space. Even the building's concourse was designed with attention to acoustic properties, allowing it to be used for informal music-making. Below the concourse level is the Music Education Centre, where workshops, courses and day-to-day instrumental teaching takes place.
The building is open to the public even when there are no performances taking place, and contains a café-bar and shop for casual visitors.
Opinion
As a new and uniquely visible cultural project, there is some depth of popular debate surrounding the Sage. There is a broad base of local support for the centre, including cross-party backing from local government. The visual and iconic impact of the building, in the context of the area's post-industrial regeneration and reinvention as a centre for the arts, is hard to ignore. It is felt in some quarters, however, that along with the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art it represents an invasion of highbrow culture that is irrelevant and inaccessible (and often incomprehensible) to the bulk of the population, and that money would be better spent on improving Gateshead's residential areas and high street. The Sage's policy of musical inclusion is designed to challenge this attitude.
The building itself has its admirers and detractors; while it is a fine example of Norman Foster's later, Pritzker Prize-winning design, comparisons with a large slug have become de rigeur among locals.
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