Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall has secured a £650,000 grant for building improvements, the Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop has announced.
In 2017-18 the Scottish Government will provide £390,000 over two years with Historic Environment Scotland contributing £260,000.
Masonry, windows, doors and the roof will be renovated at the 194 year-old former Georgian Church, which is the performance home of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, one of Scotland’s five national performing companies.
Nigel Griffiths, chair of the Queen’s Hall said: "We are delighted with this Scottish Government and Historic Environment Scotland vote of confidence in the future of the Queen’s Hall.
"We look forward to completing these important heritage works, which pave the way to an even brighter future and the celebration in 2019 of the 40th anniversary of the Queen’s Hall as a world class concert hall."
Gavin Reid, chief executive of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra said: "We are immensely grateful to the Scottish Government and Historic Environment Scotland for this important funding to support the Queen’s Hall.
"It will be welcomed by everyone in the Orchestra, our audience and by all the staff at the Queen’s Hall."
The SCO recently announced it is to build a new home in the centre of Edinburgh, close to St Andrew's Square.contew
www.thequeenshall.net
Work by Aberdeen artist Kate Steenhauer has been selected from a record number of entries to appear alongside paintings by some of Britain’s leading figurative artists.
This year over 1,600 works were submitted to the Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition, which will be on display at Mall Galleries, London, from 22 March to 1 April 2017.
Steenhauer is a multi- award winning artist, and produces work using oil paint and intaglio printmaking techniques.
The work focused on the Scottish whisky industry and selected by the Royal Society of British Artists is part of a larger project entitled ‘Scotland: Darg and Drams’.
This project will feature in a solo show at the Meffan Gallery in Forfar between from April 29.
She was recently awarded a Visiting Guest Artist Full Fellowship in Venice at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice in Italy.
The Royal Society of British Artists hold an open submission exhibition in Central London each year.
Founded in 1823, the Royal Society of British Artists was originally set up to rival the Royal Academy.
www.katesteenhauer.com
Drummer Ken Mathieson’s Classic Jazz Orchestra has two concerts lined up over the coming weeks.
The band, whose repertoire extends from the early jazz of Jelly Roll Morton and Bix Beiderbecke through to Gil Evans, appears at Edinburgh Jazz'n'Jive Club on Friday, March 17 and Paisley Arts Centre on Friday, April 21.
The Paisley concert will be followed by more jazz in the bar from local singer Evelyn Laurie. www.classicjazzorchestra.org.uk
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here