No Kidding On New MSO Hall

The long-awaited Montreal Symphony Orchestra concert hall unveiled drawings Thursday, May 28, planned for the corner of St. Urbain St. and de Maisonneuve Blvd.

From The Montreal Gazette:

Was this a concert hall I saw before me? The immediate response to the distribution on Thursday of images of a new music palace on the northeast corner of Place des Arts was, necessarily, a Shakespearean reflection on illusion and reality.

We have been here before, a few times. Drawings of nonexistent Montreal Symphony Orchestra concert halls might make a nice coffee-table book. Of course, computer-generated images, with little people milling about and gulls soaring over a crepuscular skyline, are more vivid and convincing than old-fashioned sketches and blueprints.

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New Montreal Concert Hall Revealed

Place Des Arts

From The Globe And Mail:

This is a day of beginnings and endings for l'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, which will play its final concert of the season just hours after Quebec's ministry of culture unveils an architect's model of a $110-million symphony hall planned for a narrow site adjacent to Place des Arts in downtown Montreal.

Three years after Quebec Premier Jean Charest pledged that his government would build a concert home for the OSM on the 15,000-square metre plot of land on the Centre's northeast corner, the Premier will present a scale model of Toronto architect Jack Diamond's design for a 1,900-seat, shoebox-shaped hall.

The project puts the province in partnership with Ovation, a consortium of six companies that includes Montreal construction firm Groupe Aecon and engineering company SNC-Lavalin. Workers have already begun preparing the site for the building, which is expected to be completed by the summer of 2011.

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