Officially opened by Sir Nicholas Goodison in October 2001 and named after Henry Hony, a former benefactor of the College, the Hony Centre for music and drama contains a variety of teaching, practice and performance areas.

Teaching Rooms
The Ellis Theatre and Goodison Hall
Music Technology

Teaching Rooms

The Hony Centre contains around twenty standard music teaching rooms. Each is equipped with a piano and is soundproofed and designed to acoustically enhance a player’s sound. An advanced keyboard lab also contains a digital organ.

There are two purpose designed and fully equipped drama classrooms as well as workshops for the manufacture of stage scenery.

The Ellis Theatre and Goodison Hall

The Ellis Theatre can be converted into a variety of stage formats for the performance of music or drama, or for talks and lectures.

In a conventional end-stage configuration the theatre accommodates just over 200, as a thrust stage it holds 360, and as a theatre-in-the-round it seats nearly 450 including almost 100 in the surrounding balcony which gives the theatre its exciting and distinctive atmosphere.

The Goodison Hall provides a smaller and more intimate environment for performance

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Music Technology

There are over 20 MIDI/Audio Computer Workstations in the Hony Centre running Cubase SL, Reason and Sibelius 3. All computers are loaded with MIDI and audio plug-ins, software and hardware instruments, effects and editing tools. The Music Department maintains its own network, MusicNet, which allows pupils the flexibility to work from any machine.

In addition, the Music Technology classroom contains a 24 track digital recording studio with a 72 channel, fully automated digital mixing desk. In addition to a substantial rack of outboard equipment, the mixer incorporates the latest audio effects, editing and mastering plug-ins.

This studio is linked to many other rooms in the Hony Centre by video, analogue tie-lines and a fibre-optic Digital Audio Network. Thus performances in the Ellis Theatre or Goodison Hall can be patched straight through to the studio with minimal fuss. A Soundfield MkV microphone has recently been installed in the Ellis Theatre to give pupils the opportunity to make live ambient recordings to professional standards.

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