Calgary’s other best kept secret
Cantos Music Museum houses world's finest collection of rare instruments
What do Aimee Mann, The Wallflowers and Tom Petty know about Calgary that most residents don’t? They, among a few other U.S. chart-toppers, know that our city is home to one of the world’s finest collections of rare instruments. The exquisite collection is featured in the heart of downtown at the Cantos Music Museum.
Since the construction delay of the Metronome in Toronto, Canada’s supposed answer to Seattle’s Experience Music Project, there are only two music museums in Canada – and both are in Calgary. While the Country Music Museum is a well-known establishment on the Stampede grounds, the phenomenal Cantos has yet to pop on most locals’ radar screens.
"It wasn’t nearly that contrived," says curator David Kean, laughing, when asked if it takes a concerted effort to keep the museum under wraps. "It’s not like we’ve been trying to keep the lid on it, so to speak, we really haven’t. We just haven’t made it a process to jump out and advertise it."
The museum began in 1998, a year after general manager Andrew Mosker was plucked from Montreal and hired as the first staff member. He immediately began to assemble what would become the best collection of its kind in the world. Kean would later be recruited from Oklahoma.
Mosker says their main goals are to raise awareness and educate people about music as well as to promote the universality of music – something he calls the "language of languages." Next year, he wants to fully open the doors and allow the public to interact with the artifacts on display in their 50,000 square foot space.
"They’re not pieces of sculpture, they’re instruments," Kean says. "Sometime in the near future, this collection will be accessible to local and international artists for recording projects."
At the moment, the museum is only accessible by appointment (261-7790). Because of the extraordinary value of the pieces –and the lack of staff to give guided tours – opening the museum at this point in time could threaten the collection.
What’s so amazing about the collection? It boasts such artifacts as the Audities collection (formerly of Los Angeles) of vintage electronic instruments, a theremin prototype (one of four in the world), MiniMoogs, Keith Emerson’s synthesizer, a large synthesizer built for Moscow’s Melodiya Radio, the world’s oldest square piano, the Rolling Stones’ Mobile recording bus, clavichords, harpsichords and Napoleon’s wife’s piano. There are more than 400 instruments in the collection.
Still wondering why the collection is here and not in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver? Thank your lucky stars after you thank the museum’s local benefactors who have graciously funded the project.
"(They’re) people who really care about Calgary and want to put Calgary on the music map," says Kean. "Some of our benefactors are just very strong believers in the power of music to heal. ...Their civic pride has a lot to do with the fact that it’s here, and which is why I am here."
The Cantos Music Museum will be open August 8 to 17 between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekends for the Royal Bank Organ Festival. |
