Page 125 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book

Milton Court's concert hall, photo by Maurice Sternberg

“This space is the nexus between the Barbican and Guildhall, it gives rise to so many ideas,
often the stimulus of discussions” says Huw Humphreys, the Barbican’s head of music. “It’s more
than a partnership, it's a symbiosis” says the Guildhall vice-principal and director of music
Jonathan Vaughan. “We think the same.”
The partnership, including the Barbican’s resident London Symphony Orchestra (of which
Vaughan as a player was once chairman), will be even more vital as plans become more detailed
for a new £288m Centre for Music
The Guildhall School of Music opened in a disused City warehouse in 1880, moving its 62 part-
time students to purpose-built premises seven years later. In the 1920s it added speech, voice
and acting classes, and in 1935 the word Drama to its title. In 1977 it moved to new premises
designed for it in the Barbican development. Its alumni include Tasmin Little, Bryn Terfel and
Jacqueline du Pré, and actors Eileen Atkins, Daniel Craig and Simon Russel Beale. What it did
not have was its own versatile performance space, and had to go to St Bride’s Theatre off Fleet
Street for many productions.

The Barbican Centre was built as part of the development on the Blitz-devastated Cripplegate
area of the City, and after several delays it opened to the public in 1984 with a theatre, a concert
hall, a cinema and an exhibition space. It had no chamber concert hall.

Jonathan Vaughan