LIVE AT THE PIECE HALL DURAN DURAN
Piece of my heart Cuffe and Taylor and The Piece Hall discuss Live at The Piece Hall, a new concert series that will put Halifax on the map
a local authority waxes lyrical W hen about a promoter and urges you
to have a conversation with them it’s wise to take their advice, right? Well, last summer, Nicky Chance-Thompson, CEO of The Piece Hall, visited Scarborough Open Air Theatre (SOAT) and did just that. Following a conversation with Scarborough Borough Council, ChanceThompson called Peter Taylor, co-founder of Cuffe and Taylor, which produces live events at SOAT. That meeting was last August, and now Cuffe and Taylor has entered into a five-year agreement with The Piece Hall to programme a series of live events that will put the heritage venue on the map. The first of eleven live shows took place on June 19 with the last one wowing audiences on July 10. What started out as a desire to create a series of concerts across four weekends soon grew, as high-profile artists confirmed mid-week availability. The opportunity to host Noel Gallagher and Duran Duran at The Piece Hall was too good to miss. “We got a call from Nicky in August last year,” explained Taylor, from the comfort of crew catering. “The venue wanted to do more gigs, had seen the work that we had done in Scarborough, and how did we feel about working together.
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“I hopped in the car and drove to Halifax, and we did a deal the next day. We had to get on with it, it was August [2021]. I’d already booked most of my line up for 2022 and we had to hit the ground running.” Cuffe and Taylor waited until February to officially announce that it had secured an exclusive five-year deal to co-promote headline shows at The Piece Hall, a former Georgian cloth hall – which isn’t so much of a “hall” but a stunning Grade I listed courtyard flanked by independent shops and cafés. “We shared a vision,” said Chance-Thompson. “Cuffe and Taylor understood the space and understood that we’re a heritage venue with a strong tenant community. Gigs impact our tenants, but we had a meeting of minds.”
NO BRAINER
Just one week after the first meeting, Live at The Piece Hall’s first concert went on sale to the public. It was demonstrative of the trust that both parties had in each other. “There was no rhyme or reason, no planning, just a leap of faith,” continued Taylor. “They had trust that we were going to deliver.” But it wasn’t financially viable to do one gig. Cuffe and Taylor programmed eleven concerts. There was an aspiration to create a series.
Joe Robinson, director of operations at Cuffe and Taylor, said: “We knew that we wanted to create and build a summer series. The Piece Hall didn’t want to have mid-week gigs. They wanted shows from Thursday to Sunday but when Noel Gallagher was available but only on a Tuesday, they said: ‘OK, we’ll do a Tuesday’. When Duran Duran was available but only on a Tuesday, they said: ‘OK, we’ll do a Tuesday’. No shows on a Monday to Wednesday went out of the window; the calibre of artists was a no brainer.”
EASY AND GREEN
StandOut is sitting with Robinson, Taylor, and Daniel Cuffe, co-founder of Cuffe and Taylor, as Paul Weller prepares to wow crowds. It’s show seven and 5,500 people are entering the historic venue. It’s an intriguing site. “There are so many stakeholders in the building, we have to be sensitive to the fact that they have businesses to run,” Cuffe commented. “We had to get timings right – load-in times and sound checks – and because we had done that it enabled the trust to have proper conversations with stakeholders about the mid-week shows. Partnerships like this only work if everybody wins.”
