Car Park Provides Orchestra Venue
Car park provides orchestra venue where classical music is heard from seven stories up in Southeast London. It’s the Multi-Story Orchestra founded by Kate Whitley and Christopher Stark. “We wanted to bring classical music out of the concert hall and explore other, more exciting ways for this music to be heard and understood,” the pair explains in an article in The Guardian. “By escaping the spaces that classical music normally inhabits it becomes possible to escape from traditional associations, and potentially attract audiences who might find those associations—but not the music—alienating.”
The two experimented with a variety of spaces—clubs, warehouses, museums—before settling on an abandoned parking garage, which was meant to serve a supermarket that was never built. Rehearsals are a bit of a challenge in the echoey venue, but the audience serves as an acoustic wall around the orchestra during performances.
