Orchestral manouevres in the car park

Sublime sounds are emanating from a Brutalist setting

Christopher Stark conducts the Multi-Story Orchestra

Christopher Stark conducts the Multi-Story Orchestra

A run-down multi-storey car park in Peckham Rye, south London, is attracting a new breed of customer thanks to a growing reputation as an arts and classical music venue during the summer months. The site also houses a popular rooftop bar and café, with panoramic views of the London skyline.

The 10-deck Rye Lane multi-storey was intended to serve a Sainsbury’s supermarket. But the store was never built, resulting in bay occupancy way below capacity. Recognising the potential of the imposing concrete structure, a non-profit group called Bold Tendencies decided to lease the car park’s top two vacant floors from the London Borough of Southwark for a hire fee. 

Since 2007 Bold Tendencies has been running contemporary sculpture exhibitions at the car park during the summer. The group says it has commissioned 82 new works of art and welcomed over half a million international and local visitors.

With the art show well established and much lauded, Hannah Barry of Bold Tendencies commissioned Practice Architecture to build a café on the roof, which became known as Frank’s Café and Bar. This means the top two floors are open to the public from June to September every year. 

Melodies on Level Seven

A classical music symphony orchestra called Multi-Story has been performing concerts at the car park since 2011. Composer Kate Whitley and conductor Christopher Stark, who head up the orchestra of young musicians, say the events have become celebratory occasions, attracting people who would not normally attend a classical music concert.

The car park’s sparse, brutalist expanse suited the orchestra’s desire to perform in a  “big, neutral, industrial space”, says Whitley. “The idea behind Multi-Story is to bring classical music to new audiences, by escaping the associations of traditional performance spaces for the art form. Car parks seemed like a perfect option, as they aren’t normally used for any kind of performances so don’t have any existing associations for potential new audiences.”

On 20 June the 65-piece orchestra performed Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony on Level Seven of the car park. Around 500 attended the event, with tickets sold at £5. “Previously our events have been free but we charged a small amount this year for the first time,” says Whitley.

The event attracted plenty of positive feedback, such as: “Loved the car park concert on Saturday. Just incredible – feel like I’ve waited my whole life to sit in a concert surrounded by people my own age who are actively engaged in listening to something and hearing it as a new experience.”

Reaching a new audience

“Our concerts are part of the Bold Tendencies events programme, and for us it is an ideal space as it has a café and loos on the roof so is more useable than an ordinary car park!” Whitley told Parking Review:

“It’s very exciting to bring full scale orchestral music into an environment where it isn't normally heard – it can really feel like the audience are engaging with it afresh. In traditional concert settings audiences are normally very well behaved; sitting silently and only clapping at the end of the piece, but the car park audience are much more dynamic and responsive, and you get enthusiastic applause between movements, which is really nice!” 

But there are both acoustic and logistical challenges to staging a concert in a multi-storey, admits Whitley. The height clearance at the bottom entrance is just 6ft 6in and the lift works only sporadically, she points out. “Getting all of our staging, lighting, percussion, instruments, chairs, benches in can be a nightmare; but it’s always worth it in the end.”

During rehearsals there is an “unwieldy echo” which creates a lack of concentration of sound, Whitley explains. “The audience provides a wall around the orchestra, enclosing the sound and creating what can be a very intimate performance space.”

The orchestra is made up of young professional and student musicians, mostly from around London. “They are all roughly the same age as us [Christopher Stark is 26 and Kate Whitley 25] and are musicians that we have worked with before or who have been recommended to us,” says Whitley.

Multi-Story have further shows lined up at the Peckham car park this summer, with a Shostakovich cello concerto on 26 July, and two performances of Andriessen’s De Staat on 7 and 8 August.

Whitley says the orchestra has been invited to perform at car parks in Brighton and Ipswich next year, as part of the Brighton and Aldeburgh Festivals. “We are quite keen to branch out into different sorts of spaces though so might try persuade them to look into some other options,” she says. 

www.multi-story.org.uk