Usher Hall goes back more than a century. The title has nothing to do with the people that check your tickets on the way in. Rather, it's a tribute to a man named Harry Usher. He was in the whiskey business way back when, and he donated 100,000 pounds toward the construction of a new hall. It took a while to come up with a design, but advances in concrete construction allowed the walls to be curved. The building opened in 1914; Usher died before he had the chance to see it open.
It's the home for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and several other musical organizations. The Hall seats 2,200, and the acoustics are supposedly terrific.
But it's an old building, and you know what that means. In 1996, a good-sized piece of plaster fell from the roof. Since it was after a concert, only chairs were damaged. But clearly Usher Hall needed some work. It took 11 years to figure out how to pay for it, but renovations were started in 2007 and completed in 2010.
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