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.