The Bridgewater Hall is Manchester’s international concert venue, built to give the best possible space for music. The Hall hosts over 300 performances a year including classical music, rock, pop, jazz, world music and much more. The Hall is home to the Hallé orchestra, and also hosts the BBC Philharmonic regularly. The Hall also programmes its own classical music season, the International Concert Series. The Hall works with a range of promoters and charity hirers on other programming.
The Bridgewater Hall held its first concert on 11 September 1996 and was officially opened by Her Majesty The Queen, accompanied by His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, on 4 December that year. With the opening of this magnificent venue, Manchester’s civic and cultural history entered a dramatic new phase. For over 150 years, the city had an unrivalled tradition of fine civic building, of architectural and artistic patronage and of amateur and world-class professional music-making. The Bridgewater Hall continues and consolidates these traditions, as well as being a prestigious flagship for Manchester’s overall regeneration and a symbol of its artistic health and enterprise.