Studio Bell, Home of the National Music Centre
Terracotta-clad music museum and performance venue in East Village, holding Canada's music halls of fame.
Studio Bell opened in July 2016 as the home of the National Music Centre, a charity that had been collecting instruments and recording equipment in Calgary since the 1980s. Five floors of galleries trace music-making across Canada and hold the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame. The collection runs to several thousand instruments and artefacts, among them the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, an early TONTO synthesizer and a Kimball theatre organ.
Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture arranged the building as nine interlocking towers of curved, glazed terracotta, straddling 4th Street SE and linked by a skybridge to the restored King Edward Hotel, a former blues bar now used as a live music room. The centre is a working facility as well as a museum: it houses recording studios, an artist-in-residence programme and a performance hall, and many visitors encounter instruments from the collection being demonstrated or played.
Highlights
- Canadian Music, Songwriters and Country Music halls of fame
- The Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, restored and in use
- Nine interlocking terracotta towers by Allied Works Architecture
- Live performances and instrument demonstrations most weekends
