National Music Centre | |
---|---|
Centre nationale de musique | |
Alternative names | Studio Bell |
General information | |
Status | Completed |
Type | Music Museum |
Location | Calgary, Alberta |
Coordinates | 51°02′43″N114°03′18″W / 51.0453°N 114.0549°W |
Construction started | 2013 |
Completed | 2016 |
Cost | $191 million |
Owner | National Music Centre |
Technical details | |
Floor count | 5 |
Floor area | 160,000 sq ft (15,000 m2) |
Design and construction | |
Architecture firm | Allied Works Architecture |
Services engineer | SMP Engineering |
Website | |
nmc |
The National Music Centre (NMC; French : Centre national de musique) is a non-profit museum, performance venue, and recording studio located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The centre's permanent building, branded Studio Bell, [1] is located at 850 4th Street S.E. in Downtown East Village.
The National Music Centre and its collections origins can be traced to the installation of a pipe organ (known as the Carthy Organ) in Calgary’s Jack Singer Concert Hall in 1987. [2] The installation of this instrument was the genesis of the International Organ Festival and Competition operated by TriumphEnt from 1990 to 2002. [3] It also subsequently led to the creation of a new organization known as the Chinook Keyboard Centre, which began developing a collection of keyboard instruments in mid-1996. [4] [5] Chinook Keyboard Centre was soon renamed Cantos Music Museum and expanded the scope of its collection beyond keyboard instruments to include electronic instruments and sound equipment beginning in the year 2000, it also began to offer limited programming in the way of gallery tours and concerts.
In 2003, TriumphEnt and Cantos Music Museum joined forces to become the Cantos Music Foundation, located at the historic Customs House building, 134-11th Avenue S.E, and expanded its presentation of music programs using the collection and gallery spaces. In 2005, an exhibition commemorating 100 years of music in Alberta to mark the Centennial led to plans to expand the organization’s scope to chronicle, celebrate, and foster a broader vision for music in Canada. In February 2012, Cantos became the National Music Centre. [6]
As the centre began to outgrow its space, plans for construction of a 60,000 square-foot facility in Calgary’s East Village with a projected cost of $168 million. With a design by Portland architect Brad Cloepfil, construction began on February 22, 2013. [7] The final steel beam was set into place on December 12, 2014. [8] The building eventually cost $191 million.
The National Music Centre held its last public tour at the Customs House on December 28, 2014. After that the location shut down in order to begin the move to the new centre in Calgary’s East Village. [9]
The National Music Centre's Studio Bell opened in 2016 on Canada Day, July 1, 2016, with an estimated 5600 people attending. Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo and Great Big Sea's Alan Doyle performed at the official opening. [10]
National Music Centre’s new space showcases the collection, which includes over 2,000 rare instruments and artifacts including the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, the TONTO synthesizer, and one of Elton John's pianos, along with the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame collections. [11] [12] Its interior is clad with 226,000 custom glazed terracotta tiles which were made in Germany and fired in the Netherlands. [13] Bell Canada paid $10 million for naming rights for the centre, for 12 years. [1]
The centre organizes interactive education programming, artist incubation, exhibitions and performances daily, as well as an artist-in-residence program. [14]
Features of the National Music Centre include broadcast facilities of the CKUA Radio Network [15] and a 300-seat performance hall that has already hosted a variety of events, including one of the Tragically Hip’s last concerts. Included as part of the centre is the historic King Edward Hotel, which was dismantled and rebuilt, and operates as a seven nights a week live music venue. [16] [17]
The National Music Centre also houses a world-class recording studio, featuring 3 control rooms and 3 live rooms. [18] The organization maintains a "living collection" [19] - musical instruments and equipment submitted as museum pieces which are professionally maintained to be fully operational in a studio environment. This gives artists and engineers recording at the facility the opportunity to use and experiment with a plethora of historical equipment, ranging from a 400-year-old harpsicord to TONTO, the first (and largest) multitimbral polyphonic analog synthesizer ever created. [18]
The University of Calgary is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The University of Calgary started in 1944 as the Calgary branch of the University of Alberta, founded in 1908, prior to being instituted into a separate, autonomous university in 1966. It is composed of 14 faculties and over 85 research institutes and centres. The main campus is located in the northwest quadrant of the city near the Bow River and a smaller south campus is located in the city centre. The main campus houses most of the research facilities and works with provincial and federal research and regulatory agencies, several of which are housed next to the campus such as the Geological Survey of Canada. The main campus covers approximately 200 hectares.
The Canadian Music Hall of Fame was established in 1978 by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) to honour Canadian musicians for their lifetime achievements in music. The award presentation is held each year as part of the Juno Award ceremonies. Since 2012, the inductee also performs at the ceremony, almost always as the final performer.
The culture of Alberta refers to the art, customs, and traditions of the people of Alberta. Alberta entered into Confederation in 1905, placing her in a tie with Saskatchewan as the country's second youngest province. Despite her short history, the province possesses a rich culture. The vastness of the land and variation of geography – which includes mountains, foothills, grassland, parkland, forest, and rockland – have served as important sources of creative inspiration across all art forms. Alberta's primary industries of farming, ranching, and petroleum also play a major part in the province's culture and identity.
Alberta has a diverse music scene of pop, rock, country, jazz, folk, caribbean, classical, and blues music. Music festivals in the Summers are representing these genres. Choral music, ethnic music of many nationalities, all are found in Alberta.
Mount Royal University (MRU) is a public university in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Arts Commons is a multi-venue arts centre in downtown Calgary, Alberta, Canada, located in the Olympic Plaza Cultural District.
CKUA Radio is a Canadian donor-funded community radio station based in Edmonton, Alberta. Originally located on the campus of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, it was the first public broadcaster in Canada when it began broadcasting in 1927. It now broadcasts from studios in downtown Edmonton, and as of fall 2016 has added a studio in Calgary's National Music Centre. CKUA's primary station is CKUA-FM, located on 94.9 FM in Edmonton, and the station operates fifteen rebroadcasters to serve the remainder of the province.
The Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF) is a film festival held annually in Calgary, Alberta, in late September and early October.
Bomb Factory is a recording studio and manufacturer of music plugins based in Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Downtown Calgary is a dense urban district in central Calgary, Alberta. It contains the second largest concentration of head offices in Canada, despite only being the country's fourth largest city in terms of population. The downtown is divided into several residential, commercial, corporate, and mixed-use neighbourhoods, including the Financial District (CBD), Eau Claire, Chinatown, East Village, Beltline, and the West End.
Tonto's Expanding Head Band was a British-American electronic music duo consisting of Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff. Despite releasing only two albums in the early 1970s, the duo were influential in the development of electronic music and helped bring the synthesizer to the mainstream through session and production work for other musicians and extensive commercial advertising work.
Violet Louise Archer was a Canadian composer, teacher, pianist, organist, and percussionist. Born Violet Balestreri in Montreal, Quebec, in 1913, her family changed their name to Archer in 1940. She died in Ottawa on 21 February 2000.
James Gordon Cuddy, is a Canadian singer-songwriter primarily associated with the band Blue Rodeo.
The Yale Morris Steinert Collection of Musical Instruments, a division of the Yale School of Music, is a museum in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1900 by a gift of historic keyboard instruments from Morris Steinert, and later enriched in 1960 and 1962 by the acquisition of the Belle Skinner and Emil Herrmann collections. Initially housed under the dome of Woolsey Hall, it was moved in 1961 to a historic Romanesque structure on Hillhouse Avenue, constructed in 1895 for the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.
Holger Petersen, is a Canadian businessman, record producer and radio broadcaster. He founded the independent roots music record label Stony Plain Records in 1975 with partner Alvin Jahns. The label was sold to True North/Linus Music in 2018, but Petersen continues to act as executive producer on many recording projects. He was born in Pellworm Island, West Germany.
The Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame honours Canadian country music artists, builders or broadcasters, living or deceased. The artifact collection includes extensive biographical information on the inductees. The Canadian Music Hall of Fame can be found on level five of Studio Bell in Calgary, AB, a floor entirely dedicated to celebrating and recognizing Canadian music creators and artists who have left their mark on this country and beyond.
Paul Roland Gogo, known as Gogo, is a Canadian rock-and-roll keyboard player, and multi-instrumentalist, best known for being the keyboardist of the Canadian rock band Trooper. His career has also included stints with rock vocalist Paul Laine.
The King Edward Hotel is a former hotel in Calgary, Alberta. After being abandoned, it was incorporated into the Downtown East Village revitalization project. It was disassembled and rebuilt as part of the Studio Bell National Music Centre project. The club is known as "King Eddy".
St Cecilia's Hall is a small concert hall and museum in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, in the United Kingdom. It is on the corner of Niddry Street and the Cowgate, about 168 metres (551 ft) south of the Royal Mile. The hall dates from 1763 and was the first purpose-built concert hall in Scotland. It is a Category A listed building.