WHEN villagers saw strange, unexplained lights far off in the distance last weekend they started to call police in their dozens, fearful that UFOs had arrived. The spectacular display over Perth provoked panic 30 miles away in the Fife villages of Lochgelly and Kinglassie where locals watched intricate beams and patterns dance through the night sky.

In fact there was a much more down to earth explanation for the panic — the lights were part of a show to mark the local launch of Perth’s new £20 million concert hall. Clear atmospheric conditions meant that the searchlight performance, created by the artist Simon Wilkinson, could be seen for miles.

There is, however, something of the spaceship about the Fair City’s dramatic glass and copper landmark, which has its gala opening concert tonight.

The 1,200-seat venue, which started life as a Millennium project, has ambitions to be much more than just another concert hall on the Scottish touring circuit. In keeping with its sleek, modern design, it aims to be the driving force behind the city’s regeneration, placing it firmly on the international map for cutting-edge arts. “As a brilliant piece of architecture it will be a visitor destination in its own right but it is also Scotland’s new concert hall; we are within 90 minutes of 90 per cent of the Scottish population,” Jane Spiers, chief executive of Horsecross, the company set up to run it, said.

“This building is just bricks and mortar and it is our job to bring it to life and inhabit it. The really important thing for us is that the building is totally rooted in the community, who have paid for it, have ownership of it and feel excited about it. However, we don’t want it to be just another venue on the touring circuit. We want to create our own exclusive programme of work that can only be seen in Perth.”

The concert hall’s official opening weekend is a signpost of its ambitions, with three launch nights to showcase the varied music programme which it is hoped will attract audiences far beyond the city’s 40,000-strong population.

The cherry-wood, beech and concrete auditorium is state of the art, with acoustic “sails” in the roof and a hydraulic seating system in the stalls that can make the seats disappear into the floor to create a flat space capable of housing 1,600 people for pop concerts or cabaret-style comedy nights.

The season begins tonight with a specially commissioned piece by the composer Craig Armstrong in collaboration with the artists Dalziel and Scullion. Tomorrow evening an ensemble from Mali, India, Italy and Cameroon will join a selection of traditional Perthshire musicians for a concert called Pearls of the Tay, to be followed on Sunday by Belle and Sebastian.

But beyond the musical programme, the cavernous, glass-fronted foyer of the concert hall with its restaurant-café, slate floor and plush purple leather booths, is also home to Scotland’s first dedicated exhibition space for digital art, called Threshold. It features sound boxes in the floor and walls that are triggered by people as they walk by, and a bank, or wave, of 22 plasma digital screens that are completely integrated and can present images jumping from one screen to the next and then on to two exhibition walls, or stages. There are even screens in the toilets. The first New Media piece featured will be a work by the sound artist Janek Schaefer.

Iliyana Nedkove, the venue’s creative director for new media, said: “It was in New York in the late 1960s when Andy Warhol, the high priest of Pop Art, appropriated the use of light shows and cinematic projections on walls and ceilings for the Exploding Plastic Inevitable and Velvet Underground. It is right here in Perth in 2005 where we echo Warhol’s pioneering experimentations, upgrading them for the 21st century.”

The programme has something for everyone, from a talk by Kate Adie to a Shakin’ Stevens concert. There are a series of lunchtime concerts and family weekends with book readings and theatre workshops, together with a set of exclusive concerts and classical residencies that can only be seen in Perth. Highlights include five concerts featuring all three Scottish orchestras exploring Beethoven’s five piano concertos. Mark Padmore, the tenor, will take up a residency to perform Schubert ’s Winterreise cycle and Bach’s St John Passion and the Belcea Quartet will perform Mozart and Bartók.

Ms Spiers said: “Perth Concert Hall will be a playground where people can enjoy themselves. This is not just a concert hall. It will be open 15 hours a day, seven days a week. It will be a wonderful new social space and we need to find 101 reasons for people to come here.”

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