Laidlaw Music Centre

University of St Andrews

Laidlaw Music Centre

>> DR MICHAEL DOWNES, Director of Music, University of St Andrews: St Andrews has a long musical tradition, and in recent years more and more talented instrumentalists and singers have been choosing to come to the University, which has been really exciting for us all.

But until now, in all its 600 years of history, the University has never had a space purpose-built for music.

Now, thanks to the Laidlaw Music Centre, that has all changed.

This building offers extraordinary and varied spaces in which students can sing, play, rehearse, perform and make music in all styles and all genres.

This room we are in now, in particular the McPherson Recital Room, is a space that will encourage students to enjoy the sounds they are making, persuade them to experiment and go beyond their comfort zone, and inspire them to develop their musicality in the most exciting way possible.

It is also a space where professional musicians and all from the wider community will want to come and rehearse, record and perform, putting St Andrews in the centre of the musical map of Scotland and beyond, whatever our geographical position.

MUSIC: Violin

>> LUCY RUSSELL, Honorary Professor of Strings: This space is nothing short of extraordinary.

This is like just about nothing else I have ever experienced.

It has got such a range of possibilities for timbres and articulations.

I felt, as a violinist playing in here, that I could do anything I wanted, and also it encouraged me to be more imaginative.

That is rare, when you get a space that actually makes the music come out of you in a different way because it supports you so well.

This will be wonderful for all sorts of people at all sorts of levels.

People who are maybe amateur will play in here, right up to world-class musicians, but you will feel supported, and that is a wonderful thing.

It actually makes you feel excited about performing music.

>> PROFESSOR SALLY MAPSTONE, Principal and Vice-Principal: Music has always been at the heart of cultural life at the University of St Andrews, reaching as far back as our foundations, when music was integral to the ecclesiastical services woven into the fabric of the medieval University.

It has been ever-present in our history since then.

The chaplains of the University Choir were mentioned in the foundation charter of St Salvator’s College, written in 1450.

In the 19th century, St Andrews was often referred to as the singing university, with the Gaudeamus performed at every event and procession.

The Music Society has continued to thrive since its establishment in 1881, and the University Library and Archives are populated with rare musical scores and concert programmes which date back hundreds of years.

Our ambitions for a new music centre at St Andrews arose from the University’s desire further to develop this legacy, to bring music into the community and to cultivate the exceptional musical talent of our staff and students by offering greatly improved facilities for music practice and performance.

This project was a cornerstone of our 600th Anniversary Campaign, and we were able to begin planning in earnest thanks to the immense foresight of the late Jean McPherson, who bequeathed to us her estate.

Her close friends and colleagues, who serve as trustees of the Macpherson Trust, have given their unwavering support to the Laidlaw Music Centre project.

The McPherson Recital Room, the only one of its kind in the world, is named in Jean’s memory.

This founding legacy inspired several other significant donations, including a £4 million contribution from Lord Laidlaw and the Laidlaw Foundation, for whom the building is named in recognition of his extraordinary and transformative act of support.

Other generous donors include Sir Ewan and Lady Christine Brown, the Cookie Matheson Charitable Trust, the late Lady Joan Reid, and Stuart and Geraldine Mitchell.

Over 400 individuals and trusts have supported this project, and we are grateful to all of those who have helped to make this superb new facility a reality.

We expect the Laidlaw Music Centre greatly to complement St Andrews’ existing cultural scene, including the Byre Theatre and the soon-to-be-opened Wardlaw Museum, and to nurture and encourage the already very high level of musicianship and musical participation amongst our students.

We look forward with immense excitement to the prospect of students, community members, visiting artists and our academic colleagues filling this wonderful new space with music.

>> NICHOLAS EDWARDS, Idibri, acoustician and auditorium designer: The McPherson Recital Room is the first recital room in the world to have a reverberation chamber.

That allows you to get both clarity and reverberance in the same space, and that really puts it on the map.

MUSIC: Trumpet

>> NICHOLAS EDWARDS: We took big risks here.

We had to make a building which was a work of architecture as well as a technical work of acoustics.

We had to make guesses about what would work.

We had to draw on the depth of our experience from all of these other projects and bring that to this project.

What I am hearing today is the sound that has been in my head since I saw it on paper.

MUSIC: Conch shell played by Dr Bede Williams, Head of Instrumental Studies

>> JASON FLANAGAN, Director, Flanagan Lawrence, Architects of the Laidlaw Music Centre: The acoustic strategy for the room has given us the geometry of the space, the volume of the space and the way it needs to work for different types of musical repertoire.

One of the things that has really struck me today, hearing the room for the first time, is that it has got this beautiful blend of clarity and reverberance, but it is also incredibly warm.

MUSIC: Violin

>> JASON FLANAGAN: Really, what we wanted to pick up on was that we knew the room was going to sound warm, and the reason we have chosen to make all of the architecture of the inside of the space timber is to visually resonate with that acoustic warmth of the space.

MUSIC: Horn

>> JASON FLANAGAN: Back in 2016, two things struck us.

One was the amazing trees on the site.

There are absolutely beautiful mature trees all around the site.

Then there were the neighbouring buildings, the listed Bute Building and the Regulus Building.

As you look at the building from the outside, you see a simple series of sandstone planes that relate to the materiality of the neighbouring buildings.

Our intention was to create a backdrop for the gorgeous trees that surround it, while the building sits within its setting and sits snugly between the trees.

All of the architecture of the building was designed from the inside out.

The space we are in at the moment, the McPherson Recital Room, was designed as a volumetric concept before the rest of the building was designed at all.

It was then a question of working out where best to fit this on the site, and then arranging the rest of the building around it.

At the centre of the space is a foyer, which has these gorgeous views out to the surrounding buildings and trees.

This is the key space in the building, and it has all been designed around the way it is going to sound.

>> NICHOLAS EDWARDS: The concept of the moving floor is to allow you to very quickly change from rehearsal mode to performance mode, to change from a chorus rehearsal to an orchestra rehearsal, and to experiment with different settings for different types and different scales of performance.

These settings, with audience on four sides, really bring people in very, very close, and try to get that intimacy.

>> LUCY RUSSELL: I think there is going to be a lot of extraordinary music-making going on in here.

It is a jewel.

St Andrews has the jewel, and that is this concert hall.

>> DR MICHAEL DOWNES: All of us who work in the Laidlaw Music Centre are deeply grateful for the generosity of the donors who have made this wonderful building possible.

And we just cannot wait to fill it with music.

MUSIC: Violin