Meet the venue - Village Underground

Our newest concert venue and home for our infomal concert series CLoSer is Village Underground on the City fringe. We asked our friends and CLoSer concert partners Spitalfields Music to tell us what make's the venue such a treat to visit.

Village Underground is one of those places you could only really find in East London. In many ways it’s quite unassuming (to enter you have to go round the back of the building), but then there’s the fact that on the roof are four old tube carriages serving as offices and the side of the building is London’s most public art gallery, The Wall, showcasing street art in all its various guises. So it’s not without its quirk!

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Image: Andy Schonfelder

The space inside is a brilliant blank canvas of old brick, hinting at the building’s industrial past. It forms an intimate venue for classical concerts, allowing performing and audience spaces to blur and letting the audience get up-close with the artists, making for an unusual and exclusive listening experience.

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Image: James Berry

Of course, the other great thing about Village Underground is its absolutely fantastic location. Not only really easy to get to from Shoreditch High Street on the Overground or, further down the road, Liverpool Street on the Underground and mainline, but there is a whole host of fantastic bars, restaurants and cafes to go to before and after events. There’s everything to choose from, with fine dining at somewhere like Les Trois Garçons; something simpler at Pizza East, or the Albion cafe; or just drinks at a Rivington Street bar. In addition, a five-minute walk down Commercial Street will take you to Spitalfields Market and the surrounding streets which have even more to offer!

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Image: Celine Smith

Now, all this combined with music from City of London Sinfonia has to make for an unmissable night out!

Michael Duffy
Spitalfields Music

CLoSer is CLS' short, informal concert series starting on 22 November:

 Tickets: £15 (includes a free drink)
Box office: 020 7377 1362/spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk
 
Strings Masterclass - Tuesday 22 November 7.30pm
Spirit of the Voice - Wednesday 29 February 7.30pm
Jazz Finale - Wednesday 25 April 7.30pm

Concert Focus - Nicholas Maw

A former student of Lennox Berkeley and Nadia Boulanger, Nicholas Maw was one of the great British composers to emerge in the late 1950s/early 1960s. A contemporary of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Sir Harrison Birtwistle, he came to prominence with the premiere of his Scenes and Arias at the BBC Proms in 1962. He is famous for his attempts to reconnect with the Romantic tradition and its preoccupation with sweeping melodies, which he believed had been broken by the onset of Modernism. His repertoire includes orchestral, chamber, solo instrumental, choral and operatic works, and our concert on Sunday 30 October includes some of the biggest milestones of his career.

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His sumptuous Violin Concerto, an expansive piece composed in a Brahmsian manner for a typical nineteenth century orchestra, jointly commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Orchestra of St Luke's, New York, will be performed by international violin superstar Tasmin Little.

Sophie's Choice was Maw's final opera, based on William Styron's eponymous novel on the tragic subject of Auschwitz and a mother's choice as to which of her two children to send to the gas chambers. The suite will receive its UK premiere at the concert and was drawn from the opera a year after its world premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 2002. The Suite does not follow the sequence of the opera, but includes the sumptuous orchestral writing (one of the most highly praised facets of the opera).

The concert closes with two beautiful choral pieces, featuring the Holst Singers: One Foot in Eden Still, I Stand, based on a poem by Edwin Muir on the subject of mankind's Fall in the Garden of Eden, and Hymnus, Maw's sole work for mixed chorus and orchestra based on two early Christian texts.

Royal Academy of Music students
Holst Singers
Stephen Layton conductor
Christopher Austin conductor*
Tasmin Little violin

Violin Concerto*
Sophie's Choice Suite
One Foot in Eden Still, I Stand
Hymnus

Nicholas Maw: The Master
Queen Elizabeth Hall
Southbank Centre

Sunday 30 October 7.00pm
FREE pre concert activities from 4.00pm