West Road Concert Hall

There isn't accommodation available at West Road Concert Hall. If you would like to find accommodation in a College to use alongside this meeting space, please visit our accommodation only section.

Rental terms: West Road Concert Hall is hired out on a ‘time x space’ basis, with the daily rate quoted on an 8.5 hour day, to include get-in and get-out times. The cost includes use of the Faculty’s portable AV equipment and use of the standard lighting rig in the Concert Hall. 

Personnel: A custodian will be available at all times during the period of your booking, whose responsibility is to look after the building as a whole, and to give advice on standard procedures relating to efficient supervision and safety. 

Rooms can be set out for you at the start of your conference (with 2 weeks’ written notice) but please be aware that you will need to supply all your own stewards, security, backstage and front of house personnel to staff your event. It is often possible for us to source student help on an hourly rate at certain times of the year, but we do need 2 months’ notice of this. 

Disabled access: Three wheelchair spaces are available in the Concert Hall with easy access at ground floor level throughout. A Hearing Loop is installed in the Concert Hall for patrons who are hard of hearing, and toilets adapted for disabled patrons are available in the Foyer. Guide dogs are welcome in the building. 

Public Liability Insurance: The University has public liability insurance to cover injury, loss or damage resulting from its own negligence. You are also required to hold public liability insurance to cover injury, loss or damage resulting from your and/or your agent’s own negligence with a limit of indemnity of £2m. For further information, please see our Standard Conditions of Hire. 

Parking: Parking in Cambridge is gradually being reduced by the City Council, and West Road is no exception to their stringent rules. You may find the following helpful: 

• you are entitled to use two parking spaces outside the Faculty of Music during the hours of your booking only; 
• approximately 50 Pay & Display spaces are available on West Road immediately opposite the Hall; 
• all car parking spaces on the Sidgwick Site (currently 200) are free outside normal office hours (Mon-Fri 9am – 5pm); 
• the nearest unregulated streets are Herschel, Adams and Cranmer Roads; 
• parking spaces for the disabled are available on Sidgwick Site.

Whether you are looking for a full day of catering for conference clients, or a wine and drinks reception at your concert, we can provide what you need. Our contracted external caterers are Langley Larder, though we are still able to offer simple receptions through the use of our own internal bar.

Langley Larder

Examples of the sort of food and drink that Langley Larder can typically provide are detailed in the pdf below. When you are ready to discuss this more, please call Paula on 08450 878918 or email her at food@langley-larder.co.uk.

Some events just need simple 'wine and crisp' style receptions which we can still offer through our own bar staff.  If this is what you are looking for, please call Tom on 01223 335180 or email him at tb245@cam.ac.uk.

Whichever route you choose, the cost will be added to your final invoice post-event. Please note that West Road Concert Hall does not have the facilities to store large amounts of food in the right conditions and therefore cannot allow consumables to be brought onto the premises in any way other than as described above. 

Music has a long history at Cambridge. Indeed, in 1464 the world’s first firmly-authenticated Bachelor of Music degree was awarded at Cambridge to one Henry Abyngdon, Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal to Edward IV. Over the intervening centuries celebrated musicians such as William Boyce, William Sterndale Bennett, Charles Villiers Stanford, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arthur Bliss, Alexander Goehr, Robin Holloway and Thomas Adès have studied or taught at Cambridge. In 1843 the Cambridge University Music Society (CUMS) was established, and gradually built a splendid tradition of concert-giving; half a century later came the Cambridge University Music Club (CUMC), founded for the promotion of chamber music. Cambridge has also been well-known in recent years for the performances and broadcasts of its chapel choirs, amongst whom that of King’s College (among others under Arthur Henry Mann, Boris Ord, David Willcocks and Stephen Cleobury) has gained the widest popular recognition.

Recognising the importance of music as an academic study, the University established the Faculty of Music in 1947 to teach the newly created Music Tripos, and since then the number of music students has increased enormously, musical activity of every kind has greatly intensified at both university and College level, and the tradition of distinguished musicological research instituted in the early years of the twentieth century by E. J. Dent has flourished. The Faculty now occupies the purpose-built University Music School and Concert Hall, designed by Sir Leslie Martin and built in the mid-1970s.

Over recent decades many of the most significant figures in British music have emerged from Cambridge: the composers mentioned above, performers such as Joanna MacGregor, Robert Tear, Thomas Trotter, Roger Vignoles and David Waterman, and conductors such as Andrew Davis, Mark Elder, John Eliot Gardiner and Christopher Hogwood. During the same period the Faculty’s intellectual bounds have moved outwards from historical musicology to include music analysis, ethnomusicology and music cognition. The Cambridge Music Faculty is, in short, committed to providing the highest quality of musical education, to conducting research at the forefront of contemporary scholarship, and is proud to build on the great foundations laid in earlier times.