bROTHERS iN bAND | DIRE STRAITS - 50 YEARS

Parkgebouw is a concert venue on Oosterhofweg in Rijssen, a town in the Dutch province of Overijssel. It works as a multipurpose hall rather than a club built around a single genre, which shows in the range of events listed for it over the years. Yamaha includes Parkgebouw Rijssen among the multipurpose halls in its list of major projects for the AFC3 acoustic enhancement system, which places the room in the same company as opera houses, concert halls and university auditoriums in several countries. That is a useful clue to the kind of sound environment the building aims for, since the system is designed to adapt a hall's acoustics to different kinds of performance. Concert listings show that the venue has been active for a long time. The Damned Elsrock Festival took place there on 29 November 2007, so the building was already hosting live music nearly two decades ago. More recent entries include a show in February 2023 and The Cosmic Carnival in March 2025. Songkick lists an upcoming concert by Anneke van Giersbergen, the Dutch singer best known for her years with The Gathering, which fits a venue that draws rock and alternative audiences. The programming also stretches toward larger staged productions. Beyond The Music, a show that reimagines the songs of U2 with a full live band fronted by Irish vocalist Nigel Connell, was booked at Parkgebouw alongside the Royal MusicAll Orchestra under conductor Piotr Oleksiak. A hall that can host a local rock festival, a singer from the Dutch metal and rock scene and an orchestral tribute show is clearly built for flexibility, and that adaptability is what defines Parkgebouw in the Rijssen area.