Some know The Sage Gateshead as a place where famous people play. But PLAY will show you this is not the whole story, as DAVID WHETSTONE explains

THE Sage Gateshead opened with a fanfare in December 2004, so it’s surely a little early for the 10th anniversary that is to be celebrated this weekend with a programme of concerts, performances and even a world record attempt?

Not so. As director of learning and participation Katherine Zeserson explains, it is a decade since North Music Trust, which runs The Sage, started putting out feelers across the region.

The PLAY weekend, running from tomorrow until Sunday, offers a taste of all that has happened under that neat acronym, which stands for Participate & Learn All Year.

How time flies – and how easy it is to forget that the landmark building near the Tyne Bridge was still a twinkle in an architect’s eye as the 21st Century dawned.

When it started to rise from its muddy site, block-like and unappealing before the roof went on, key staff members were already hard at work, first in the restored St Mary’s Church and then in Gateshead Old Town Hall.

Katherine remembers that she was out and about, seeking the people who were already making music in unconnected pockets of creativity.

Roving from north Northumberland to Teesside and across as far as Barrow-in-Furness, her brief was to map the region’s musicality.

She has vivid memories of meetings in village halls and community centres, anywhere people gathered to sing or play instruments.

She recalls that initially she heeded the advice of a colleague and made little attempt to explain about the forthcoming building in Gateshead. In Barrow-in-Furness, Gateshead seems a long way away and she didn’t want to confuse people.

And even now, while many people think of The Sage Gateshead as the place where music is learned and performed, the truth is that it is just the visible symbol of something that stretches from coast to coast.

Katherine says there were always hot spots of excellence, such as Generator, the pop music agency, 20,000 Voices, the Northumberland singing initiative, and Folkworks and Northern Sinfonia which merged to become part of North Music Trust.

But in some ways it was a different world then. “Ten years ago people didn’t even have ipods,” says Katherine.

With people not connected as they are now, it was always part of The Sage’s mission to make those connections.