Venues & stages

Type

Music centre

Address

Chemin du Bleu-Léman 1, 1844 Villeneuve

By the lake, at the eastern end of the Riviera, the Clos du Verger has had several lives before becoming, in 2011, a place for music. The site once housed the Hôtel Carlton, which in 1917-1918 hosted the Orchestre symphonique des Internés Alliés, the symphony orchestra of allied internees, and later the Chillon College, a school for young men, close to the Institut Bleu-Léman, a boarding school for young women whose name survives in that of the lane it stood on. Following the testamentary wishes of Sylvia Waddilove, an English patron attached to Villeneuve, the property was converted in 2011, a hundred years after her birth, into a music centre: a 120-seat concert hall, a stage large enough for orchestras and operas, four working studios and lodging for around twenty musicians, set within a park of more than two hectares overlooking the lake and the Château de Chillon. Made available to the Conservatoire de Montreux by the Fondation Sylvia Waddilove, the centre is used for the Conservatoire’s rehearsals, workshops, auditions and concerts; from 2014 to 2016 it also hosted the very first laureates of the Montreux Jazz Academy, before it moved to Lausanne. Concerts open to the public are held there through the season, without a fixed schedule.

Related artists :Sylvia Waddilove