From Victorian acoustics to digital suites: Wellington’s musical revival begins

Tuesday, 3 June 2025

The public is getting a glimpse inside Wellington’s Town Hall that’s been closed for more than a decade and is scheduled for reopening in early 2027.

A small contingent of local media accompanied Arts Minister Paul Goldsmith, the NZ Symphony Orchestra’s board chairperson Carmel Walsh, the orchestra’s new chief executive Marc Feldman and orchestra project manager Craig Thorne on a tour of the still-under development Town Hall on Tuesday.

The Town Hall is a key part of the national music centre, a collaborative project between the orchestra, Victoria University’s NZ School of Music and the city council.

In this year’s Budget the Government gave $2 million to the music centre project.

The vision is to bring together music students with the orchestra’s professional musicians to create educational and artistic synergy, and a world-class musical precinct in the heart of the capital’s civic area.

Earlier comments compared the centre to New York’s renowned Juilliard School and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

However the centre has faced various roadblocks that’s meant its exact final layout has yet to be determined.

Stage one of the project revolves around the completion of state-of-the-art recording studios, production and video suites, practice/performance areas and other workspaces for musicians, plus storage space for the orchestra’s large and multitude instruments.

All this is being built in the Town Hall’s basement, and is what officials were touring on Tuesday.

Walsh said the project had been in the offing for “a long time” and the orchestra was excited about the Town Hall’s “tantalisingly close” reopening.

“The Town Hall refurbishment creates a beautiful space for us to perform in a Victorian-era acoustic but with the 21st century digital functions downstairs, which will make it a fantastic place to be, to perform and to record.”

Walsh said the dedicated spaces would allow it to expand its business of recording music for screen projects. Some films the orchestra has previously worked on include Sir Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and more recently, A Minecraft Movie (2025).

There would also be administrative spaces in the reopened Town Hall that orchestra staff could use, Walsh said, in addition to its current offices in the Findex House building across the road on Willis St.

The national music centre was originally supposed to give the orchestra’s administrative staff their first-ever permanent home.

However, sites that had been canvassed previously for that purpose had fallen over ‒ including a yet-to-be-built Willis Bond building.

“There are some options for us to move [our offices] if we wanted to move,” Walsh said.

The orchestra explored the idea of moving some of its administrative functions into the Wellington Central Library building, however it ultimately decided against that.

There was flexibility in terms of its current Findex House leased space, Walsh said.

“We have a lot of flexibility where we move in terms of our administrative spaces and how we calibrate ourselves in terms of the whole national music centre and in collaboration with our partners,” Walsh said.

Stage two of the music centre project was more to do with Victoria University moving into the spaces, Walsh said, adding the university had a later construction schedule than the orchestra.

The university’s music school students would be able to use the Town Hall basement recording suites and practice rooms, Walsh said.

But where its extra teaching and other rehearsal spaces will be is uncertain.

Feldman said it was extremely important to first complete stage one, so the groups involved could move into stage two being “well informed” about how they work together.

The total cost of the Town Hall earthquake strengthening, which the city council has led, has been projected at up to $329m.

The total cost of the fit-out of the Town Hall’s basement, comprising stage one of the music centre project, is $11.6m ‒ a figure successive governments have contributed to, including the $2m from this year’s Budget and $6m from the previous government.

The rest of the $11.6m is made up of money raised by former Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast.

To date she has raised, or got donors to commit and pledge to a total of just under $33m for the entire national music centre project, including for future stages. That sum includes the money given by successive governments.

On Tuesday, Prendergast said she was still hoping to raise more money.