“An ambitious £288m concert hall that was supposed to be ‘the Tate Modern of classical music’ has been scrapped by the City of London Corporation, which said the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic made the plan impossible to complete,” writes Lanre Bakare in Thursday’s (2/18) Guardian (U.K.). “The Centre for Music was billed as being an acoustically perfect 2,000-seat concert hall for the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and would have had restaurants, commercial space and a smaller venue for jazz performances. The City of London confirmed on Thursday, however, that the project had been axed…. The loss of the venue will be a blow to those who feel London is still without a venue to rival those in cities such as Paris and Hamburg, which have spent heavily on controversial and over-budget concert halls. It will also leave classical musicians and technical staff without crucial work, as many struggle with post-Brexit visa rules when applying for work in the EU. The City of London also announced it would invest in the Barbican Centre and ‘upgrade the 40-year-old complex.’ It said the search for a world-class architect-led team to lead the project would be launched later this year.”
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