How provision for some young Suffolk and Norfolk musicians has developed, and the role Britten Pears Arts’ new O’Hare Music Centre is playing in that.
A new partnership between Britten Pears Arts and the Norfolk & Suffolk Music Hub isn’t necessarily big-time newsworthy stuff, though it resonant enough to justify inclusion on Thoroughly Good.
The recently reopened building, post-£17.7 million refurbishment, on the site of Snape Maltings Concert Hall in Suffolk is now home to a range of scheduled activities already underway, serving a much wider range of young people.
Activities include a weekly Saturday school for children of all ages, new Friday afternoon singing groups (a nice nod to Britten’s own Friday Afternoons), and termly performances for Hub programmes too.
The Britten Pears Building – now named Britten Pears Arts O’Hare Music Centre – has always been home to music making. Established as the first home of Britten and Pears legacy to the next generation of musicians back in 1979 — the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Music Studies — now sports a lift, sound-proofed studios, a much improved performance space, and a great deal of wood-cladding. Importantly it’s there not just for post-grads and early career professionals, but for those discovering music much earlier in their lives. A trite commentary would like reach for the suggestion that it’s what Britten would have wanted.
Activities now scheduled for the building span both weekends and the music curriculum with sessions for babies and toddlers, KS1 through to KS5 for ages 5 to 18 years old. It will also be the location for the Advanced Young Musicians programme, and the Festival Academy.
Many of the UK’s orchestral and ensemble players, and soloists, conductors, and composers and singers will have benefited from Britten and Pears legacy — the barley store was converted in 1979 and was home to the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Music Studies for nearly 25 years after it was started seven years before. This latest iteration of the building widens access to Suffolk musicians at various stages in their development.
It’s reasonable to assume the naming of the Britten Pears Arts O’Hare Music Centre indicates the critical role principal private benefactors Mark and Lindy O’Hare have played in the Britten Pears Arts Capital Programme has played in enabling the refurbishment.
Suffolk-based philanthropists Mark and Lindy O’Hare built their substantial fortune via financial data intelligence, culminating in the sale of Mark O’Hare’s company Preqin, to BlackRock announced in June 2024. The transaction netted the couple reportedly £2 billion through their family holding company, while widespread employee equity schemes delivered £510 million directly to staff and management.
The couple have emerged as key cultural benefactors in East Anglia. Lindy O’Hare serves as a Trustee of Britten Pears Arts. Their philanthropy also extends Cambridge Arts Theatre’s renovation. Even before the sale of Preqin in 2024, the O’Hares had completed the build of nearby Thorington Theatre – an open air theatre seated in a WW2 bomb crater built from sustainable materials grown on the farm the couple owns. Thorington was the site of a handful of concerts in the Aldeburgh Festival this year, including Guy Johnston’s Britten and Bach programme.
To return to that earlier point about resonance. Forty years ago, I played in the Suffolk Youth Orchestra, then run by Suffolk County Council. The opportunity was found quite by chance, simply as a result of participating in the then Aldeburgh Foundation’s (now Britten Pears Arts) Celebration of Schools Music. Forty years later, the modern descendant of Suffolk County Council’s Music Service is the Suffolk Music Hub. This new partnership between Suffolk and Norfolk Music Hubs and Britten Pears Arts, in the building I once worked in thirty years ago as an orchestral manager, tugs at the heartstrings. Sure, this is an announcement from an arts organisation about a building in its portfolio. It’s also part of my history and, I suspect, a great many others too.
