It’s time city had top class music venue

The renowned Bath Mozart Festival, Bath’s premier showcase for Chamber Music, is being streamed this year.

This is excellent news, but what I would like to know is why The Assembly Rooms?

It is completely the wrong venue for Chamber music which has heritage and origins in the European ‘salons’ of the 18th/19th century.

These were intimate drawing rooms in private homes and later in purpose-built, small concert venues.

The Assembly Rooms is a vast, Georgian ballroom and totally at odds with the chamber ethos in size, ambience and acoustic.

So where else? Why, I ask does our city, with its international reputation for high-quality music, not have a world-class, purpose-built concert venue that has comfortable, tiered theatre seating instead of straight chairs and hospitable reception area for patrons.

We should respect both indigenous and visiting artists by providing bespoke green-room facilities and most importantly, artists need a proper stage, not to be perched precariously on temporary stage blocks.

According to the Festivals Office Bath has no less than 19 ‘venues’ of which only the Abbey was ever built with music in mind but which, like all churches lacks the essential amenities listed above.

Let me now address the matter of access. If you are disabled, (young or old), or just elderly and a little infirm you might as well stay at home.

It could be argued that streaming is therefore a good idea and indeed it is for the elderly and infirm who are also digitally

nimble. Bath can do better than this. The development along the Riverside needs more diversity than flats, offices and retail outlets all of which are no longer in the upward pre-pandemic trajectory.

This City needs a philanthropically funded, fully accessible Community Arts and Cultural Centre with ongoing financial support provided by a superb concert hall.

We are a small city with a small footprint, therefore I am not thinking ‘The Royal Festival hall’ or even ‘The Beacon’ in Bristol but the London venues ‘The Wigmore Hall’ or King’s Place Cultural Centre on the Regent’s canal at King’s Cross.

It wouldn’t do tourism, so important to Bath’s economy, any harm either. There is an audience beyond Netflix!

Sheila Kinsella Weston