Hobart Town Hall: Tasmania, AUSTRALIA

This was a new place to perform for me! The Hobart Town Hall, for a chamber music concert... I have been down in Tasmania before, when I was much younger... but that was to play with the Symphony orchestra, and that was at the larger concert hall instead. These days, my musical life is quite a different thing, so it is more in line to play in more intimate venues!

Coming into the Town Hall, well... it is still in use for its primary purpose of being a... Town Hall! But when you do enter, you come into a lovely framed staircase, with the walls lined with previous office holders. Definitely a colonial style to this one!

Old historical flags, but of the modern flag designs greet you when you are half way up the stairwell...

... as well as strange garbs... I think that these were past mayoral ceremonial costumes. What really did catch my eye were the amazingly beautiful timber cabinets that they were housed in! Tasmania does have a tradition of woodworking that goes with the timber industry down here.

The ceiling of the function hall that the concert was to take place in was ornately decorated... not crazily Baroque in style, but still a step up from the bland modern architecture!

... and this was the view of the stage, backgrounded by an older organ. It was actually quite a nice room to play in... timber floors, and hard walls did make for a decent acoustic. However, on stage, it was a little bit trickier to play in... the sound that you heard on stage wasn't really quite the same as the one that you heard in the audience. From outside, it was quite distant sounding and a bit muffled... on stage, it sounded much more direct and live. Ah well, that is our job... to work with the acoustic that we have... at least it wasn't dry as all hell, those are the absolute worst when you play an acoustic instrument and especially a treble one!