Festival Hall was opened in 1958, on the occasion of the first Osaka International Festival for which it was specially built. The Shin Asahi Building was renovated into a skyscraper named Festival Tower East, the plan for which was announced in April 2007 by Asahi Shinbun Company, a group that includes the Asahi Building Co., Ltd. The original Festival Hall closed on December 30, 2008, and was subsequently torn down. The original Festival Hall had great acoustic characteristics, loved by many renowned musicians, a number of whom such as
Tatsuro Yamashita had expressed strong concerns about the reconstruction of the Hall. American group
The Jackson Five, and British rock bands like
Pink Floyd,
Led Zeppelin,
Deep Purple,
Queen and
Ten Years After all played the Festival Hall in the early 1970s during their first visit to Japan. According to producer Jack Douglas, the audio from
Cheap Trick at Budokan is actually from Osaka. The audio recording of the Tokyo show was unusable in 1978.
1975 Miles Davis concerts On February 1, 1975, Festival Hall hosted a series of concerts by
Miles Davis during the musician's tour of Japan. The performances were captured by
Columbia Records' Japanese division, then known as
Sony, and released as two albums —
Agharta (that day's afternoon concert) and
Pangaea (the evening show). ==New venue==