The Goo 1
New Venue AUG-SEPT 23 CLIODHNA RYAN Whyte Hall on
Westland Row Deborah Kelleher, Director Royal Irish Academy of Music, tells us more... Ireland has lacked a 300-400 seater hall for small ensembles and chamber music. Finally, we have such a venue, thanks to the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Tell us about the process. Which came first, the hall or the campus for teaching? Well, the hall was always part of the dream, but we designed the project in two phases, in case we couldn’t raise enough money to do both. I’m an educator and an Irish person, so I’ve grown up with chamber concerts in the John Field Room which is a foyer, and in churches which don’t have any facilities and whose acoustics are too resonant. In the best conservatoires, you have world-class halls. I wanted the RIAM to have such a hall; a cultural jewel for the city and the country. Where does its name come from? You have many moments of magic when you play music. When fundraising, you also have such moments and this was one. The Ireland Funds connected us with an American Irish man called Stephen Whyte, who is an amateur French horn player on the board of Seattle Symphony. He funded the hall and in return, we named it after him. One of the challenges with housing a hall in an educational institution is integrating it into the cultural life of the city. How do you plan to do that? ABIGAIL SMITH & LIOBA PETRIE Well, we’re not a venue and we have not marketed on that basis before, so we’ve had to think about raising our public profile and attracting people in. This year is also our 175th anniversary, so we were always going to try to come out from behind our Georgian pillars on Westland Row. So, we have a threepart documentary on RTE that delves into the journey of some of our students. We have banners on our railings now saying “Hey, there’s a venue inside. Come in and have a look around!”. The biggest thing will be word of mouth because people are so blown away by the hall, that they literally gasp. You cannot perceive that there is something so big and splendid behind the Georgian facade. In terms of the platform, who is it for? My dream is that top professional ensembles, artists and chamber musicians see it as their Dublin home. Saying that it is conceived as a hall for our students. We want them to be walking the corridors with people from the ICO or the IBO and thinking “Wow, that could be me”. You’re launching the hall with the Wigmore Hall Festival. The person that runs Wigmore Hall is an Irishman, John Gilhooly. How did the relationship between the RIAM and the Wigmore come about? Well, a year before the opening, John and I were talking about launching the hall and he said “Why don’t you do a Wigmore festival, with the best artists from our 23/24 season?” It’s a huge statement because when you think about worldclass chamber music, you think about John’s programming. Anything we can do to combine the magic of one and the potential of the other is wonderful. As well as concerts during the festival, you’ve got masterclasses and Q+A’s. Are all events open to the public? Absolutely. For example, the day after her concert, Mitsuko Uchida is doing a Q+A with me and everybody is welcome. That same afternoon, Jonathan Biss is doing masterclasses and again, the public is welcome to come along. On the 12th of September, Stephen Hough is doing a Q&A directly after his recital. There are so many exciting concerts, classes and conversations happening across the festival. Clinch Wealth Management is sponsoring the festival, so we are able to offer 100 free tickets for music students Finally Deborah, where do you see the hall five years from now? In five years’ time, I would like to see members of the public coming into the Whyte Hall regularly to see not only international and Irish artists and ensembles, but also performances from our students. I want them to see the future of music in the hall as well as the ones that have made it into a career. Students hoping to attend one of the concerts can find out more about how to apply for a free ticket at riam.ie/clinch. Tickets for the festival are on sale at riam.ie/whats-on. PAGE 37