© Dan Brady
Welcome from our General Director
A warm welcome to our summer diary – this year expanding on many fronts beyond our previous summers- and to the newly evolved version of our original 2002 name and logo.
At the heart of a rich season of festivals sits our contribution to the first ever Festival of the North East – June’ s region-wide celebration of 1,400 years of North East culture heralding the arrival of the Lindisfarne Gospels on loan to Durham. We’ re also delighted to welcome back the Hispanic and Lusophone ¡ VAMOS! Festival, and no Sage Gateshead summer would be complete without our own teeming SummerTyne Americana weekend – while this year our Festival of Youth Orchestras has a new penumbra of associated courses in a season which also sees end-of-year celebrations from many of our own student ensembles.
In June we also complete our unforgettable double symphonic cycle( all Brahms’ and Schumann’ s symphonies from Northern Sinfonia / Thomas Zehetmair), before Northern Sinfonia move into Hall Two for their popular summer chamber festival( this year
putting Beethoven in a kaleidoscope of different contexts), and at the other end of the scale we reach year three( Siegfried) of Opera North’ s lavishly praised voyage through Wagner’ s mighty Ring Cycle.
Meanwhile our more informal series continue- Hall Two’ s gloriously anarchic music-theatre afternoons for the very young( Scorching Songs for Summer Days), Jazz Café and our Sunday Lunchtime performances, and in mid-summer( when our annual maintenance programme closes our halls) our widest range yet of family things to do and enjoy in other parts of the building- while our new Concourse bar is already becoming a friendly new destination in its own right.
Our most spectacular innovation of the summer is to add to our regular Building Tours an entirely new opportunity – be one of the first to dare to walk the roof of Sage Gateshead and marvel at the most breathtaking view in NewcastleGateshead! And at the heart of these three months in our halls, enjoy a regular stream of distinctive, rewarding musicians – vocal superstar Sinéad O’ Connor, actor, comedian and blues musician Hugh Laurie, welcome returns of the Hallé orchestra and Québec’ s vivid folk phenomenon Le Vent Du Nord, with the region’ s own deliciously eclectic Lanterns on the Lake now graduating from Hall Two to Hall One.
Whatever in this packed diary brings you to Sage Gateshead or to Gateshead Old Town Hall this summer, I hope you have a rewarding visit.
Anthony Sargent General Director
www. thesagegateshead. org Tickets: 0191 443 4661