Muziekcentrum De Bijloke (Gent: BELGIUM)

Pre-pandemic, I used to come to Gent quite a bit more often than I have in the previous year or so. Well, a lot of that has to do with all the cancelled concerts and the fact that most of musical life has been at best described as "on hold". During this time, places have taken the opportunity to renovate concert halls and infrastructure, partly due to the fact that there was time and space to do it (no concerts) and the due to the fact that many governments thought that the best way to support arts and culture was to give support to large scale infrastructure/institutions. Of course, there is the other view that money would have been better spent going towards musicians and the practitioners of arts, but that was not an opinion that the important people thought made sense.

Anyway, leaving aside all the gripes... the Muziekcentrum de Bijloke is a sort of culture hub for Gent. It houses the local Music Conservatorium in addition to some galleries and music and concert venues. I have played a number of times in the halls here, both the larger and smaller one... but this particular visit, the main hall seemed quite different. I do wonder if it had been renovated during the pandemic or beforehand... or just as likely, I am remembering something different!

So, as always... I see a slightly different perspective of these concert halls and venues than the public does. The front entrance, the one that looks nice and impressive... is not the one that I will often use! For me, it is the rear entrance, or the artist's entrance... or if you will, the servant's entryway!

The most interesting thing about this building is that it is a building within a building. I'm not sure what the original building ways, but by all appearances, it was a church of some sort... complete with some stained glass windows. Although, given the trend towards the hip and interesting in this town, I also wouldn't be too surprised if it was just designed like that... but that would be quite strange!

The outer building has large expanses of glass walls, rooves and windows which allows the inner building to be seen from outside which is a nice touch!

Now, to the reason that I think the concert hall had been renovated (or my memory is flawed)... I don't think that the rear area behind the stage existed from what I remember, and I seemed to think that there was a stained glass rosette behind the stage as well... however, I have played in so many places and my memories are so fleeting that I do wonder if I just remembered the place wrong or am confusing it with a different place.

Looking back into the audience, there are rows of nice comfortable seating in a tiered fashion. The tiering is always a nice touch for those who are sitting further back... and the side seats (not quite visible on this photo) are slightly angled towards the stage. The side seating angling is quite a good idea, as it means that the audience isn't always sitting with their heads turned completely in one direction. That gets quite painful after a few minutes!

Of course, the most important part for a musician is the green room area. In this venue, it is high up on the restricted access areas. During the day, the stairway gets really quite hot due to the height and the glass construction (think greenhouse...), but as soon as you open the door into the common area, it is nice and cool from the air conditioning.

It is a decent enough green room, not the best... but definitely not the worst. I do wish it was closer to the stage though!

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