About Us - National Music Centre

Education
Exhibitions
Incubation
Performance
BUILDING
A HOME
FOR
MUSIC IN
CANADA
About NMC
OUR MISSION:
To give Canada a place
that amplifies the love,
sharing and understanding
of music.
OUR VISION:
To be a national catalyst for
discovery, innovation and
renewal through music.
The National Music Centre (NMC) is a national catalyst
for discovery, innovation and renewal through music. In
its new home at Studio Bell, NMC will preserve and
celebrate Canada’s music story and inspire a new
generation of music lovers through programming that
includes on-site and outreach education programs,
performances, artist incubation and exhibitions.
Our Programs
Programming at NMC is innovative, diverse, inclusive,
and collaborative. NMC reaches music lovers through
programs and exhibitions, including a wide demographic
of people from children to professional musicians. NMC
delivers programming in four streams: education,
exhibitions, incubation and performance. Our programs
are designed to:
• Provide original and inspiring experiences for all ages.
• Create access to NMC’s exceptional collection.
• Draw on NMC’s rich partnerships, at the regional,
national and international levels.
• Provide creative opportunities for musicians,
researchers and technicians.
Our Collection
NMC collects artifacts that represent the history of
music technology and tell the story of music in Canada.
Our collection philosophy is based on accessibility,
which brings our collections to life and invites the
exploration of sound and history to create new music.
Our collection is comprised of more than 2,000 pieces
and will be on display to the public and available to
artists in residence when we open in 2016.
Our Exhibitions
Music festivals are the inspiration behind our
exhibitions, which will merge technology and storytelling
to create an immersive and exciting visitor experience.
Curiosity will drive visitors to explore the sounds, light
and interactive activities pouring out of 22 individual
exhibition stages, encouraging them to engage in an
ever-evolving discussion around music in Canada.
WHERE MUSIC LIVES
Une tournée des salles et bars-spectacles les plus
en vue du Canada tels que choisis par nos plus
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Sample wall from Where Music Lives exhibition. Credit: St. Joseph Media
SMIT
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Basia Bulat playing NMC’s Hammond Novachord. Credit: Brandon Wallis
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From majestic music halls to wild watering holes,
take a tour of the country’s most storied stages
THE COMMODORE
BALLROOM
KING EDDY
HOTEL
MASSEY
HALL
FOUFOUNES
ÉLECTRIQUES
THE KHYBER
CLUB
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA
OPENED: 1930 CLOSED: 1996 RE-OPENED: 1999
CAPACITY: 900
CALGARY, ALBERTA
OPENED: 1904
CAPACITY: 180 (PRIOR TO 2004 CLOSURE)
TORONTO, ONTARIO
OPENED: 1894
CAPACITY: 2,752
MONTREAL, QUEBEC
OPENED: 1983
CAPACITY: 2,500
HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA
OPENED: 1998 CLOSED: 2006
CAPACITY: 100
The Commodore’s been called the “grande dame” of Vancouver nightlife, and she has ruled over the city’s gaudy, grungy
Granville Street for almost a century. The club began life as
the Commodore Cabaret in 1929, built by booze baron George
Reifel and designed by architect H. H. Gillingham.
Gritty and proletarian, the King Eddy courted controversy from
the beginning: the modest hotel was reportedly a bootlegging operation during Prohibition and was home to the city’s
first desegregated bar. But in 1981, after the failing hotel had
become a disreputable hangout for bikers and prostitutes, oil
company engineer Jack Karp bought it and transformed the
bar into an internationally celebrated blues joint.
Built by farm equipment magnate Hart Massey as a gift to the
city of Toronto, the red brick neo-classical hall remains Canada’s most storied music venue and ranks among the world’s
greats. Its warm acoustics and eccentric design—a meld of
Italian classical features, Moorish revival style and a 1930sera art deco redesign—are as renowned as the legends who
have graced its stage, from Enrico Caruso to Gordon Lightfoot
(who’s played there an unprecedented 150 times and refers to
it as “the centre of my universe as a musician.”)
It’s an art gallery, rock bar and punk club that has almost
always lived up to the brazen gusto of its name: Foufounes
Électriques, or “electric butt cheeks.” Founded by weirdos,
staffed by giants, filled with pierced, raucous troublemakers
and some of the greatest bands of the past 35 years, there is no
concert hall more emblematic of Montreal’s gritty downtown
and all its violent joie de vivre.
This city-owned three-storey Victorian brick behemoth’s groundfloor bar has been, like so many local venues, a forever open
door nailed closed at the whim of the sitting city council. From
the mid-’90s to mid-’00s, it was a hangout and performance
space for luminaries like Joel Plaskett, Buck 65 and Jill Barber.
Since then, it’s been home to dinner-and-dancing nights,
performances by big band icons Count Basie and Glenn Miller
and, after 1969, when its walls were painted red and it was
renamed the Commodore Ballroom, live acts of every musical stripe. Patti Smith, Tom Petty and the Police all made their
Vancouver debuts here.
The venue’s most renowned feature is its unique sprung
dance floor—provided by burlap bags of horsehair stretched
over a bed of rubber tires—a buoyant, undulating surface that
legendary bluesman Taj Mahal called “the dance floor of the
world.” In 2011, Billboard magazine named the Commodore
number eight on its list of the top ten most influential music
clubs in North America.
Above: The Swedish heavy metal band Opeth play the Commodore Ballroom in 2011
This was where you paid five dollars to hear legends like Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Pinetop Perkins and B.B. King. It
was where Buddy Guy played through the crowd like a sweaty
Pied Piper, 250 feet of guitar cable in tow. Countless Calgary
musicians earned their blues pedigrees at fabled Saturday
afternoon jams, with the 180-seat-capacity bar regularly spilling over with 400 people or more.
The place has always maintained its rough, industrial feel—part
black box studio, part graffitied subway tunnel. And it’s always
drawn eclectic, exciting musicians, from k.d. lang (whose 1985
show was her first Montreal appearance) to Nirvana.
While other notable venues, like Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium or Harlem’s Apollo Theater, helped to create signature
styles and define specific American cultures, Massey Hall’s
great significance was in establishing Toronto as a necessary
stop for touring global artists.
The King Eddy escaped being demolished for a railway pass,
was dismantled in 2013, and then reassembled in 2016 as the
historic cornerstone of the National Music Centre.
In 1953 the concert hall presented what was one of the greatest
jazz shows of all time, a performance by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach, which
was captured in the live album Jazz at Massey Hall.
Above: Toronto blues legend Jeff Healey sits in with the Hoodoo Sons at the King Eddy
Above: Rock revivalists Sha Na Na dazzle capacity crowds at Massey Hall in 1972
d
Inside the Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Studio. Credit: Colin Smith
Bigger, flashier rooms awaited them all, but each began on
that tiny stage, playing their hearts out through its street-facing
windows. Plaskett’s 2001 album, Down at the Khyber, was
recorded at the top floor of the building. Halifax’s folk festival
In the Dead of Winter launched its first edition in February,
2006, which was to be t-he Khyber Club’s final weekend.
Hardcore shows have now given way to more hip-hop nights,
but the drinks are still cheap, the clientele diverse, and a giant
metal spider still crouches in the courtyard. The Montreal
Gazette’s 1992 description might have been written last week:
“The person sitting next to you could be a student, a beatnik,
a punker or a suit.”
The building now awaits its inevitable transformation into
condos, but its legacy as an incomparable creative incubator
remains. Plaskett put it best in 2014, still speaking hopefully
in the present tense: “It’s where people who occupy the fringe
cut their teeth, launch their careers and find their community.”
Above: Psychobilly rockers the Creepshow at Le Pouzza Fest in 2013
Above: Joel Plaskett, the Nova Scotian singer-songwriter and longtime Khyber habitué
About Studio Bell
Studio Bell represents an exciting partnership between
NMC and Bell, Canada’s largest communications
company. This partnership will support NMC’s vision to
connect with music lovers across Canada and to create
an international hub for music and technology.
Studio Bell is currently under construction in Calgary’s
East Village and is scheduled to open in spring 2016.
Studio Bell is home to the National Music Centre, a
national cultural organization devoted to amplifying a
love, sharing, and understanding of music.
Studio Bell lobby. Credit: Allied Works Architecture
What’s Inside Studio Bell?
• 300-seat performance space and multiple reception
areas
• Broadcast facilities
• Distance learning education centre and classrooms
• Café and retail space
NMC Collections and
Exhibitions Features:
• Home of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and
the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame Collection
• Acoustic and electronic sound labs
• Artifact conservation and restoration workshops
• Artist in Residence program for Canadian and
international artists and technicians
• Incorporation of the famed King Eddy Hotel as a
live music venue
• Three recording studio spaces, including the
Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Studio
Studio Bell entrance. Credit: Allied Works Architecture
Construction began in
early 2013 and remains on
schedule to open in spring
2016. The project will cost
$168 million and NMC is
actively raising funds to
achieve its vision.
Building Partners
Allied Works Architecture, Portland, OR and New York City
Kasian Architecture, Calgary
CANA Construction, Calgary
Haley Sharpe Design, Leicester, UK and Toronto
St. Joseph Media, Toronto
Find out more at: nmc.ca/StudioBell
NationalMusicCentre
@nmc_canada
nmc.ca
Cover images (clockwise from top):
Studio Bell rendering, credit: Allied Works Architecture; ATB Alberta Stories Roadcase Program,
credit: Chad Schroter-Gillespie; NMC Guitar Club, credit: Wanda Martin; King Eddy sign; The
Original New Timbral Orchestra (TONTO) from the NMC collection, credit: Don Kennedy.
National Music Centre | Centre National de Musique
134 – 11 Avenue SE, Calgary, AB T2G 0X5 | T 403.543.5115 | F 403.543.5129 | TF 1.800.213.9750 | nmc.ca