The Croydon Philharmonic Choir made its long-awaited return to the refurbished Fairfield Halls last night. And so, too, did KEN TOWL
It’ll probably be wonderful once it is finished…
When a Croydon re-opening commands the presence of the Mayor of London himself, you know something big is happening.
Sadiq Khan was the star guest at the overdue Fairfield Halls ceremony last month and its doors are now open to the public after more than three years and £41million (as opposed to the two years and £30 million originally envisaged) of renovations.
It had been a rather sad affair in recent years, a shadow of its former glory, home to little more than right-wing comedians, on tour to pay off their maintenance bills, and tribute bands. I confess to having only been once during the slightly-more-than-a-decade that I have lived in Croydon, and that was to see the Bootleg Beatles (on March 11, 2009, it turns out, according to the internet). I have not been to see any right-wing comedians.
Through the good offices of Inside Croydon, I managed to procure two tickets to Verdi’s Requiem performed by the massed voices of the Croydon Philharmonic Choir and the London Mozart Players, the house band, as it were, of the Fairfield’s 1,800-seat concert hall. I invited Ashley along, too. She is good company at the best of times but she also knows a bit about architecture and, furthermore, works for a cultural venue down on the coast built in the Modernist style of the 1930s.
I told Ashley about the Fairfield’s sad past, about the tribute bands, and I wondered if the Fairfield Halls will once again become the prestige music venue it once was, when the likes of The Beatles, The Who, Queen and Status Quo played there.
Imagine 160 voices intoning, ‘The day of wrath shall consume the world to dust’
Probably not.
A look at the What’s On section of the Fairfield Halls website seems to confirm this.
The big names in popular music this season are a Buddy Holly tribute and an Elvis tribute in November, a Whitney Houston tribute in December and an Elton John tribute in March, all in the smaller (800-seat) Ashcroft Theatre. It will have to do better than this, given its stated aspiration to be a “Southbank for Croydon”. Brutalist architecture alone is not enough.
That said, you can find the real Elton John in the toilets at the back of the Arnhem Foyer.
Life-size photographs of past performers look down at you in the cubicles from the backs of the doors. Ashley came back from the toilets in a state of excitement.
There’s a real Elton John in the toilets
“Yehudi Menuhin was on the back of the toilet door. Luckily, he was playing so intensely, he had his eyes closed. Cilla Black had the good grace to avert her gaze but Ray Davies looks straight at you. Not what you want when you are sitting there with your underwear round your ankles.”
There will be more adventurous music in the appallingly named “The Recreational”, a new 750-capacity “gig space”. Grandmaster Flash (the real one, not a tribute), will be playing “White Lines” and his other hits there on December 7. Presumably, Mr Flash just needs a microphone and a turntable to do his stuff. Probably best to get a ticket fairly quickly if you are interested. Get The Message?
£11m over-budget and 15 months late, and still the refurbishment is not finished
Another interesting development is the newly resident Talawa Theatre Company, London’s leading black company, who have moved into office space and will use a 200-seat studio theatre. Let’s hope we see more from them than the mere two performances of A Christmas Carol, both on December 14, that the Fairfield Halls’ programme mentions. The Halls also houses the inclusive community-based Savvy Theatre.
When you enter the Fairfield Halls from the front, you find yourself in what they are now calling the Arnhem Foyer, a huge atrium with a mezzanine that impresses due to its scale and clean lines of wood and metal. This, too, will be a venue, apparently specialising in veteran Radio4 presenters (John Humphrys on October 31, Jenni Murray on November 28).
The furnishings have been chosen to match the mid-20th-century glamour of the building
There is currently an exhibition of photographs chronicling the Windrush Generation which provides a fascinating insight into the lives of a generation who had to negotiate their way into acceptability and, as has become apparent very recently, are still having to do so. It will be there till January 12; well worth popping in for this alone.
I went along to the venue to see it without the crowds. It is a strangely forbidding yet seductive place.
On one hand it has a palpable majesty to it, an aura of real-life “people’s palace” and yet, at the same time, it is unfinished and surrounded by construction workers putting the finishing touches to the Ashcroft Theatre on the north side and a guy in a crane doing something to the tops of the high, flat walls of the south.
The seats in the concert hall are disappointingly threadbare, despite a £41m refurbishment
When you enter, a bunch of security guards stop you and ask if you have a ticket, then just say “OK” when you say you are visiting. There is quite a security presence in the foyer.
Not so much, fortunately, in the rest of the building, where I was given free rein to wander.
The interior is impressive. There is something timeless and democratic about brutalism. It is perhaps the opposite of the gold-tap syndrome so beloved of dictators around the world, that desperate (and vain, in both senses of the word) use of architecture and design to emphasise the power of the occupant.
These long corridors, these open spaces, these huge plates of glass and concrete belong to the many, not the few. The utilitarian splendour of the 1960s, a time of social upheaval when we gave up tugging our forelocks and embraced liberation and The Beatles, has been rejuvenated at the Fairfield Halls.
For the few, not the many. At £15 a time, including a ‘free’ drink and ‘limited nibbles’
A caveat, here.
The fourth floor VIP members’ lounge, with its plush Chesterfield sofas, seems a world away from the democratic style of the halls. It has a private balcony with views across to the Clocktower. You can opt to pay £15 to gain entry. This includes a “free” drink and, a helpful receptionist explained, “limited nibbles”. This is brutalist Utopia for the few, not the many.
Ashley and I made do with a 330cl can of cloudy citrusy IPA and a small glass of Rioja on the mezzanine – a bargain at a little less than a tenner, and the bar staff were charming.
We were very impressed by the building.
You could imagine that it would have been the height of glamour in 1962, when it was opened originally. Huge care has gone into the restoration, and the furnishings have been well-chosen to blend in with the mid-20th century aesthetic of the venue. We couldn’t help noticing, however, that many of the seats in the concert hall are threadbare.
The brutalist architecture provides what should be a people’s palace
It seems a shame and is all the more noticeable given the wonderful appearance of everything else.
But what of the concert, Verdi’s powerful Requiem, with its “Dies Irae” centrepiece?
Imagine 160 voices intoning, “The day of wrath shall consume the world to dust”, while strident brass instruments make sounds like the end of the world.
My limited powers of description cannot do it justice. The acoustics are incredible. All I can say is – go!
It is probably as good a place as any to hear classical music and it is on our doorstep.
And if classical music isn’t your bag, you will probably find something more to your taste in the Savvy or the Talawa or the Ashcroft or the Recreational. And if not, there’s always the opportunity for a citrusy IPA on the mezzanine.
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Great post – thank you.
Relieving to hear some positives about the place. I still reserve judgement until I visit – but glad it’s not all doom and gloom.
However, not replacing the seats is borderline criminal on £40 million budget.
I also attended the concert last night as a winner of two tickets from Inside Croydon. The concert was excellent.
The seats clearly haven’t been renewed as they look worn. My impression of the foyer is that it’s been stripped out and redecorated in a basic sort of style. I can’t remember if it was carpeted before. The concert hall really looks unchanged.
Great article. Good that the message overall is positive. Clearly the seats need to be renewed or refurbed as a priority in next 12 months. Glad to hear that the drinks were not overpriced. That really helps an evening out!
With hindsight, it is obvious that a building like this would have a lot of asbestos, designed and built as it was just before the hidden problems of the “wonder material” asbestos were recognised.
The money would have had to have been spent anyway to remove it. There is no “quick way” of stripping it out, as far as I know.
I hope that live music to suit a range of tastes figures prominently in the future programme.
The work has not been finished, and much of what was promised in the original £30m budget has not been done at all.
The building was scoped, twice, by structural engineers before the refurbishment work was begun, and the presence of asbestos was well-established. That was all included in that £30m budget.
So how they managed to go £11m over-budget, for what has ended up being a re-wiring and paint job, remains unexplained.
Never mind The Beatles playing the Fairfield Halls in early 60s. They would play any two bit town and seaside resort that would have them.
The most memorable Fairfield Halls 60s concerts to this day were the American Folk and Blues concerts from 1963/64/65/68, which never played central London venues at all, mostly Manchester, Bristol/ Glasgow/ Croydon and Paris. For serious blues fans (including me and many of today’s top rock’n’rollers, who could only hear these blues artists on rare import LPs) this was a dream come true to actually see and hear these legends right on our doorstep. I still remember these incredible concerts to this day.
Croydon Philharmonic Choir have 100 members according to their own website. This concert featured 60+ guest singers, many from other local choirs, who were charged to participate.
Yes, Sue, that’s right – as we reported in the preview of the concert.
And your point is?
I saw jazz legend Dave Brubeck, famous for “Take 5”, play at the Fairfield twice, once to a sell-out crowd in the early 70s with superb clarinetist Paul Desmond, and later in the 80s to a tiny audience. Perhaps his career was going through a dip at that time.
He invited us all down to the front rows, and gave us a fantastic concert. It must have been gutting for him, and sad for us to see a great performer at a low ebb.
Thankfully, his career went upwards again in later years. We saw guitarist Segovia twice at the Fairfield — and Cleo Laine – an honour to be there to see live performances by these international music stars.
More recently, now long before Fairfield closed, and just a few months before he announced his retirement, my wife and I bought a front row ticket to watch Julian Lloyd Webber and friends.
Pure magic, and an intense privilege – to sit just a few metres away from this consummate artist, and watch every nuance of his playing as he moved the bow of the cello , slowly, quickly, short, long, full on or at an angle to create subtle and moving music.
Again, a fantastic thing to have been there seeing a world top musician creating their art.