Before the day was over we had already begun talking about what they want to do next year . . .

The NGT kick starts the Colston Hall’s week long celebrations of the new foyer; Encouraging the next generation of young art and music lovers amoung you to get involved! Drum n bass legend and local lad Roni Size will be accompanied with MC Jakes, Ghetts, Joker and radio 1Xtra’s Ras Kwame who will be presenting, performing and headlining throughout the day all the way through to 1am.

Teenage Rampage starts at 4pm showcasing the best unsigned bands in the South West who will be performing on the lengendary main stage where the Beatles, U2 and Jimi Hendrix have all performed.  Regional winners will also win a session in a recording studio and get their own industry mentor!

From 10pm NGT will then collaberate along side the Bristol Festival in hosting Rave-on-Avon which will see  a host of exciting live music events. Roni Size, Joker and JME will perform along side young D&B and Dubstep DJs. Over in Hall 2, Tim Sensation will be playing rock and pop leading up to UK Rocka’s old school garage set to take us through to the wee hours.

So whether you want to come down and to listen to live music, perform yourself, learn, watch or get creative behind a camera or spray canfor that matter, the 19th September at the Colston Hall is most definatley the place to be.

Tickets are on sale now at £8 under 18s/ £10 over

For more information visit

www.myspace.com/newgenerationtakeover

Tuesday night saw the classical soft launch with the Emerald Ensemble and an audience of about 1,200. By all reports the ensemble performed really well but as a team we were getting ready to run a full evacuation of the auditorium. Now it is rare to run a full test like this but we felt it was important to see how it would work. We also decided to make things difficult for ourselves by nominating the west corridor as the location of the fire, which takes out two major street level exits. Again it worked well and we had the venue empty in 7 mins. We will obviously be changing some things and believe we can get the time down but 7 mins gives us a healthy margin for safety.

I must also apologise to the bass player of the Emerald’s, as I was leaving stage after thanking the audience I bumped into his music stand and sent the music flying, all a bit embarrassing in front of 1,200 people, but I got a nice round of applause.

Graeme Howell, Colston Hall Director

We have had the public in the building at other times for various one off events but this is the first time we will have run the whole complex in the way we imagined it. I am expecting something’s to go wrong, and I am expecting some things not to work how I thought they would, but that why it’s a test. To be honest if it all goes smoothly I will be a bit surprised and disappointed. We need to learn where the loose bits are before we open to paying customers. We have another event on Tuesday with the Emerald Ensemble, and there is still a few tickets left for it, so if you fancy coming down and helping us to do a bit of quality assurance testing give the box office a ring!

Graeme, Colston Hall Director

Invada Poster

then marvel at his other works here.

Jonny

Last weekend was Bristol’s Harbour Festival, an event that the Hall has been involved in for four years. This year we focused our efforts on our usual site in Queens Square, where we run the music stage, and a new site in Redcliffe Wharf for the REMIX youth music stage. A great weekend was had by all and the organisers are reporting record numbers which is certainly in line with the bar take from the bar we run on site. I must also take this opportunity to say a big thank you to Willmott Dixon Construction who sponsored the stage and provided me with nice coffee throughout the weekend.

So what is the advantage of a well stocked backstage bar? Unfortunately the headliners for Sunday evening managed to breakdown in Newbury, on their way to the Festival, but only let us know 20 mins before they were due on stage. Obviously such a large gap to fill with such little time was going to be a real challenge, but luckily there were enough of the cream of Bristol’s music scene hanging around drinking backstage that a bit of a super group was cobbled together. The core of which was Los Mercenarios with Craig Crofton, Mike Willox and Guy Calhoun, but Phil King, who had done a corking set earlier in the day, joined them on vocals and John Fenlon on harmonica. It was a great way to round off the Festival and they really had the crowd jumping, so my thanks goes out to them all.

Next up are the square sessions in Queen Square on the 14 and 21 August, so let’s hope the sun is shining.

Graeme