Symphony Hall

Symphony Hall is a 2,262-seat concert hall on Centenary Square in Birmingham, built within the International Convention Centre. Sir Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra gave the first concerts there on 15 April 1991 — two of them the same day, so twice the audience could be present — and Queen Elizabeth II opened the building formally that June. Percy Thomas Partnership and Renton Howard Wood Levin designed it with the acoustics settled before the architecture: Russell Johnson's firm Artec gave the shoebox room reverse fan walls, a canopy over the platform that raises and lowers, and a reverberation chamber behind the stage that adds half again to the hall's volume, and the whole structure sits on rubber cushions because a covered railway line runs 30 metres away. In 2016 the acoustician Leo Beranek ranked Symphony Hall the finest-sounding concert hall in the United Kingdom and the seventh best in the world. Home to the CBSO and run by the charity B:Music alongside Birmingham Town Hall, it holds around 270 events a year — classical seasons and recitals on the 6,000-pipe organ installed for its tenth birthday, beside jazz, folk, rock, pop and comedy — and unveiled a new façade and foyer performance spaces in 2021.