My husband and elder son went to a concert in the Pump Room, promoted by the Bath Recital Artists’ Trust. The performers were two school-age pianists from the RCM.
The BRAT (if they will forgive my abbreviating it so) seem to be the only people using the Pump Room for concerts these days. In the past it has been made use of rather more frequently. When we first came to Bath the Allegri String Quartet had a regular concert series there, but that ended after a few years. Likewise the Chantry Singers gave a Christmas concert (I sang in several of these) but these stopped when the choir disbanded.
I’ve been to some Bath Festival events at the Pump Room, staged in a rather more relaxed fashion than the usual rows of sets facing a platform. One was a late-night performance Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, where we sat at tables, cabaret-style. I’d walked the Lyke Wake Walk a couple of days previously and still felt fairly spaced-out. The other was the Paragon Singers ending the ‘Party in the City’ on an opening night, accidentally accompanied by nearby fireworks, where the audience sat around casually on chairs or the floor.
The Pump Room has a nice acoustic and seats a fair number of people without being overwhelmingly large. Admittedly there is work if it needs to be set out as a concert hall, but it is a pity it is not so used more often.