Abbey Road Institute adopts Angel as new home
Posted on: Thursday 15th of April 2021
Angel Studios, which closed last year after 40 years as a prime London recording location, has been leased as the new home for Abbey Road Studios’ education division, Abbey Road Institute.
It was rumoured that the Islington site would be redeveloped into accommodation in the wake of the closure, but Abbey Road’s intervention will ensure that it persists as a recording facility, and live a second life as a base for the Institute’s growing student base.
Angel Studios has seen a diverse clientele over its four decades in operation, including The Cure, Sam Smith, Adele, Siouxsie and the Banshees, One Direction and Robbie Williams – as well as lending its acoustics to scores from The Lion King, Downton Abbey and Moulin Rouge. It will reopen in Summer 2021 and stand as the flagship location for the specialist music school, and one of seven separate schools across the globe. While the Institutes says demand has outgrown its current home at the famous St. John’s Wood location, students will continue to use the school’s dedicated studio at Abbey Road alongside the new HQ.
The Grade II-listed Angel building is being carefully restoring it to enable the school to move in, and The existing studio spaces will be returned to use. The site will also house a studio for hire, managed by the bookings team at Abbey Road. This will continue the Abbey Road Institute modus operandi of being located amongst commercial working studio.
Abbey Road Institute claims its programme sees 95% of graduates going onto work in the industry and has recently moved to help diversity in the sector by announcing a new scholarship for two black British students to study with it, followed by a year-long engineering work placement at the world-famous studios.
Luca Barassi, CEO of Abbey Road Institute says: “Our first home and inception have been at Abbey Road Studios, where we have been able to forge and define the strong relationship between the training we provide and the day-to-day reality of arguably, the world’s most acclaimed commercial studio. The move into Angel Studios brings many possibilities for our school, our students and our international Abbey Road Institute family, enabling us to start our next chapter.”
2021 will mark Abbey Road’s 90th Anniversary, the latest milestone in a rich history defined by a string of iconic recordings and underlined by the legacy of The Beatles.
You can read more about Angel Studios’ redevelopment over the coming months at Abbey Road Institute’s blog.
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