Vogelmorn hallYou know the drill. You go to the same bar every week and pay tons for booze, and have to deal with a loud crowd who are just there to be seen and who talk through the music you’ve paid to see, and you just think “ugh! I hate this, it’s all the same and it’s crap”.  Well hope­ful­ly Sarah Smythe and Thomasin Sleigh have the solu­tion for you.

The pair have teamed up to pro­duce  a series of gigs are tak­ing place in old halls around Welling­ton through­out 2013, going by the name Old Hall Gigs.

“Old Hall Gigs was cre­at­ed because we were dream­ing of non-row­dy places to lis­ten to our favourite bands. It is a rov­ing series of events tak­ing place in halls around Welling­ton. The events will allow for close lis­ten­ing and atten­tive watch­ing.

Each Old Hall Gig will include read­ings from local writ­ers (thanks to Hue & Cry), work by visu­al artists, and con­tem­po­rary dance. There will also be per­for­mances by solo musi­cians and bands from unex­pect­ed gen­res. Whilst the title of the series implies music events, we enjoy a lot of dif­fer­ent types of art, so each evening will be a care­ful­ly cal­li­brat­ed cou­ple of hours of visu­al and aur­al activ­i­ty.

Old Hall Gigs hopes to rein­vig­o­rate some of the com­mu­ni­ty halls around Welling­ton and to encour­age each local com­mu­ni­ty to take part and share these events with their fam­i­lies and neigh­bours.

The first event will take place on Sat­ur­day 18 May at the ele­gant Vogel­morn Hall in Brook­lyn.

The line up for the night includes the beau­ti­ful music of Welling­ton-based duo Glass Vaults, a sculp­tur­al instal­la­tion by the artist col­lec­tive of Sarah Hud­son, Brid­get Reweti, Ter­ri Te Tau, and Ere­na Bak­er, read­ings by bright young poets Lee Pos­na and Hera Lind­say Bird, and a solo vio­lin piece by com­pos­er Tris­tan Carter. Also: it’s BYO — bring your own cup as well.