A Visit To The Experience Music Project.

I went with my guitar playing son and his girlfriend to the Experience Music Project in Seattle. The building is one designed by architect Frank Gehry; full of curves and metallic surfaces and devoid of anything that might resemble a right angle. That was just the outside.

The inside would have followed suit if not for the myriad of rectangular sound booths where one can pretend – if one is musically challenged – or actually play an instrument of one’s choice. All three of us crammed into a booth where a couple electric guitars were available.

I love listening to music – all kinds of music but especially rock – but in this minimal space with amplifiers up the wazoo, my innards decided that even though we hadn’t yet had lunch, whatever trace of breakfast from hours earlier felt like it might reacquaint itself; what with all the reverberations from bass notes thrumming through my body.

We learned much about Jimmy Hendrix – Seattle’s native son – where there’s a “shrine room” in his honor, but unfortunately had to race through the rest of the “Experience” missing far more than we should due to a time constraint.

Looking up at the giant guitar sculpture “Roots and Branches.”

Copyright © 2008

The Experience Music Project (EMP) is a museum of music history founded by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, located on the campus of Seattle, Washington’s Seattle Center. It is sited near the Space Needle and is by one of the two stops on the Seattle Center Monorail, which runs through the building. Paul Allen’s Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame is located within the EMP building.[1] EMP has provided funding for radio station KEXP in partnership with the University of Washington.[2] EMP was also the site of the demo and concert program for the first international conference on New interfaces for musical expression, NIME-01 and the Pop Conference, an annual gathering of academic, critics, musicians and music buffs.

The museum contains mostly rock memorabilia and technology-intensive multimedia displays.

Permanent exhibits include the Northwest Passage which is a hall containing exhibits on the history of popular music in the Pacific Northwest. Exhibits include Bing Crosby (Tacoma, Washington), The Kingsmen (Portland, Oregon), Heart (Seattle, Washington), The Presidents of the United States of America (Seattle, Washington), Sir Mix-a-Lot (Bremerton, Washington), Nirvana (Aberdeen, Washington, via Seattle), and Pearl Jam (Seattle, Washington) . Also included are some less famous artists including Queensrÿche (Bellevue, Washington), and bands far more obscure, such as The Pudz (Seattle, Washington). Numerous video clips show interviews and performance footage, and extensive commentary and additional recordings are available via handheld computers.

There was an exhibit on Jimi Hendrix which was open from June 7, 2003 to August 5, 2007. There is also the Guitar Gallery, dedicated to the history of the guitar; a massive sculpture, Roots and Branches originally conceived by UK exhibit designer Neal Potter and developed by Trimpin made largely out of musical instruments, especially guitars, which are played by electronically controlled devices; the Sound Lab, in which museum-goers can learn the basics of playing various instruments; On Stage, a simulated onstage experience; and Costumes from the Vault, a collection of performers’ costumes.[8]

E.M.P. introduced a travelling collection exhibit in 2002 entitled Disco: A Decade of Saturday Nights. It remained in Seattle, WA for one year, then in 2003 it moved to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI and in 2004 to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. It has since been retired. Wikipedia.