The Sage announces plans for next 5 years

The Sage Gateshead has marked its fifth anniversary, at 5pm on Thursday 17 December, exactly five years since the building opened, by announcing plans for the next five years.

Future projects include extending education and outreach work, the creation of new artistic roles, further reductions of the carbon footprint, and commissioning new work.

The Sage Gateshead will work with the Emmanuel Schools Foundation to embed and extend high-quality music making in the Foundation’s four educational Academies. It will also form a new cross-organisational partnership with Gateshead Council to create and promote music education opportunities for young people in the area.

The Sage Gateshead has designed new music programmes with its partner Gateshead College, including music technology, technical skills, production and performance at access, BTec and Foundation Degree level. In 2013, The Sage Gateshead will launch a new residential International Summer School, embracing all types of music.

Percussionist Brendan Murphy will take up the new Associate Artist role at The Sage Gateshead, working with participants of the Learning Programme; John Wilson will join as Principal Conductor and Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer David Lang will be Composer in Association from 2010.

David Lang will write two works for The Sage Gateshead, including an opera, Fidelio, which takes part of the story used by Beethoven used and gives it an original 21st-century political twist. The Sage will also commission a new concerto for orchestra from British composer Simon Bainbridge.

In the five years since its opening, The Sage Gateshead has received more than 3 million visitors at more than 200,000 music making sessions and 2,000 performances.

See photos from the event below.