New performance space to join Liverpool's musical landscape

A new performance space is being created in the city as part of a £20.5m Arts and Humanities Centre at the University of Liverpool.

The 400-seater venue will be open to the public as well as offering a first-class facility for music-making at the university.

The auditorium will have an optimum acoustic profile and offer publicly accessible performances across different genres, with capacity for a 70-piece symphony orchestra.

The major project will also provide three lecture theatres, catering for more than 1,000 students across disciplines, seminar facilities, informal study spaces, a new cafeteria and outdoor seating area.

Professor Catherine Tackley, head of the university’s Department of Music, said: “The intention is to complement Liverpool’s existing musical infrastructure, and with the Arts and the Humanities Centre that means filling a gap with a venue uniquely suited to the performance of a very diverse range of musical genres – from classical and contemporary compositional to jazz and folk, and everything in between.

“Liverpool deserves this.

“It deserves both a Department of Music and a concert hall befitting of the fact that music is lifeblood here, perhaps more so than any other city in the UK.”

Work will begin on the multi-million pound project this spring.