Alexandra Palace opened in 1875, though the surrounding Park had been open since 1863, and a first Palace burned down in 1873 after a 16 day inaugural extravaganza of entertainment. Music was always a central attraction at the Palace. The Grand Willis organ in the Great Hall, a sibling instrument to the Royal Albert Hall “Voice of Jupiter”, attracted thousands of visitors to large performances with orchestras and choirs.

Popular classical music programmes featured Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Elgar while Handel’s Messiah was performed again and again over the century and famously in the 1970s under Yehudi Menuhin.

The Theatre at Ally Pally hosted opera, pantomime as well as music hall acts including Nelly Power, who was the first performer of music hall standard The Boy I Love is Up in the Gallery. In the Park open air concerts and military bands were a staple of the Palace holiday season. Before it became a roller skating rink the Concert Hall, and the Exhibition Hall (now an ice rink), were also popular music venues at the Palace.

In 1914 the Park and Palace were requisitioned by the British government as a refugee camp for those fleeing Belgium and the Netherlands. Later during the First World War the Palace became an internment camp for German, Austrian and Hungarian men living in the UK. Up to 3,000 ‘enemy aliens’ were detained in the Palace at any one time and many were artists and musicians. The internees established a camp orchestra and put on theatrical performances to pass the time.

Alexandra Palace wasn’t returned to the public until 1922, when the Trustees relaunched a post-war programme of music and variety entertainment. The Palace held the annual North London Exhibition from 1925, where the latest bands could be seen performing from elaborate, modern stages. At this time the Theatre was refurbished and leased by Archie Pitt, husband of Gracie Fields for rehearsing and trailing her shows. Rumour has it Gracie was first to nickname the place ‘Ally Pally’.

In a ‘world’s first’, the BBC launched the newly created television service from Alexandra Palace in November 1936. Former dining rooms were transformed into two state of the art studios, buzzing with hi-tech. Adele Dixon performed a new song composed for the opening night called ‘Television’.

The rival Baird and Marconi-EMI television systems testing out the new medium showcased every form of musician and performer. They discovered that music broadcast well, as compared with radio, as the extra bandwidth of television signal improved the sound quality. Hyam Greenbaum conducted the newly formed BBC Television Orchestra, and band leaders Henry Hall and Jack Hylton brought jazz to viewers. Cabaret shows were transferred from the West End to the studios on the hill, and elaborate productions were conceived for the new medium. Margot Fonteyn regularly danced and Les Ballet Negres, the first all black ballet company performed on the early service.

Television returned after the Second World War, when continuing innovation brought programmes for children, like Annette Mills at the piano with puppet Muffin the Mule. Singer Adelaide Hall became the first live performer to be tele-recorded, allowing television segments to be broadcast as repeats.

In the 1950s colour television trials began on the out of hours experimental service. Guyanese actor Cy Grant delivered a unique take on current affairs in the topical ‘Tonight’ programme.

Alexandra Palace hosted ground breaking All Night Carnivals of Jazz, All Night Festival of Beat Music and in 1964 an All Night Rave headlined by The Rolling Stones. In 1967 Pink Floyd played a sunrise set in the Great Hall for the ‘14 Hour Technicolor Dream’ benefit. This event launched the status of Alexandra Palace as one of the most important gig venues in the city.

The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream was a seminal moment in the 1960s Underground scene. The Move, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Soft Machine, The Purple Gang, poets and performance artists gave eclectic, spaced out shows. Yoko Ono’s “happening” that night encouraged the audience to cut pieces of fabric from the model’s dress until she was naked. John Lennon watched on with his friend John Dunbar. DJ John Peel ran around the place following rumours of VIPs who had been spotted. Legend has it Andy Warhol remained in his car the whole event, refusing to speak to ‘mortals’.

The 1970s saw legendary rock bands Led Zeppelin, The Who, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Grateful Dead, T. Rex and Queen play Alexandra Palace. In 1979 the Capital Radio Jazz Festival featured B.B. King, Dizzy Gillespie, Muddy Waters, Dave Brubeck and Chuck Berry.

Despite a fire in 1980 destroying most of the building Alexandra Palace continued to host the sound of the era, bringing in punk with Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Slits, The Jam and The Stranglers hosting their last gig with Hugh Cornwell. Reopening in 1988 brought… Barry Manilow!

Returning to our knack of hitting the zeitgeist, in 1989 The Stone Roses played their first major London gig at the height of the Madchester movement. And in 1994 Blur supported by Pulp, launched Parklife from Alexandra Palace, creating the sound of Britpop.

Ally Pally hosted the Brit Awards and MTV Europe Music Awards, bringing Madonna, Take That, the Pet Shop Boys, The Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, George Michael and a duet from Elton John and Ru Paul. Metallica were notoriously shunned by MTV following their last minute switch out of single King Nothing for the expletive laden Last Cares/So What?. Major 1990s gigs included Orbital and The Chemical Brothers. The MOBOs in 2000 featured the Fugees, Craig David and Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes. The new millennium saw the arrival of indie rock with The Strokes, The White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand, Kasabian and The Arctic Monkeys.

Jay-Z ushered in the latest wave of stars that has seen Bjork bring the finale of her Biophilia tour and Florence and the Machine play a five-night residency. DJs, and drum and bass arrived with David Guetta, Swedish House Mafia, Skrillex and Disclosure. We are proud to have hosted the UK’s first Afropunk Festival in 2016 and that Mercury prize winner Skepta began a new wave of British grime artists to call Ally Pally home.

After 80 years lying dormant, in 2018 we reopened our Victorian Theatre.  Since then the unique atmosphere and heritage of the space has wowed renowned artists including Madonna, Liam Gallagher and Robbie Williams during their intimate events. Our beautiful Park also hosted its first festival since the ‘70s – ‘Kaleidoscope’ – which returned to Ally Pally just five days after the easing of Covid-19 restrictions on the 24th July 2021. Indeed, even when the Palace was closed to the public during the pandemic, we welcomed many legendary artists through our doors for live streams, from Nick Cave, Michael Kiwanuka and London Grammar, to Arlo Parks, Wolf Alice and Coldplay.