For spring break this year my husband suggested a trip to Arizona to enjoy the sun and attend a spring training baseball game.  While we had been to Arizona before, we had never spent much time in the Phoenix area, so I did some reading on suggested attractions for visitors.  I was surprised to learn that Phoenix has a world class Musical Instrument Museum.

The Musical Instrument Museum, or MIM, opened in 2010 and calls itself the world's first truly global music museum.  It has a collection of 15,000 instruments and artifacts from every country in the world, with about 5,000 on display.  The museum curators have traveled all over the world to collect instruments and have also commissioned new instruments.

As we entered the museum we were given a set of wireless headphones and an audio receiver.  Most of the displays have a video screen and as you stand by it you can see and hear demonstrations of the instruments being played.  The museum galleries are organized by region and country, and most of the videos show actual performers from the featured country.  Some of the films include historical footage as well.  I found it fascinating to see the basic similarities between instruments from diverse cultures and to see how instruments and musical styles were adapted and changed as they travelled outside their places of origin.

In the North American gallery there is an exhibit sponsored by Steinway which includes a film about piano building in their U.S. factory and interviews with their craftsmen.  On display there is a piano called the "Kitchen Piano" which is reportedly the first Steinway built by Heinrich Steinway in his home workshop in Seesen, Lower Saxony, Germany in 1836.

The MIM also has an artist gallery with displays of instruments played by famous musicians, mostly contemporary pop artists.  I enjoyed seeing the Steinway upright which John Lennon purchased for his home in New York and used to compose the song "Imagine."  In that same gallery there is a Steinway upright called a G.I. piano, which the company was given permission to build for sale to the U.S. government in 1942 when most piano building ceased due to the war.  These pianos were used to boost soldiers' morale and some were even dropped by parachute into the frontlines in Europe.  It is finished in an army fatigue green color.

Another museum gallery features mechanical instruments, such as music boxes, barrel organs, and nickelodeons, which were the high tech inventions of their day.  I saw a live demonstration of a giant mechanical organ originally from a dance hall in Belgium which has 680 pipes, two accordions, two saxophones and percussion.  There was also a very interesting exhibit showing how master player piano rolls were produced on an arranging piano.  The process took several hours to complete a two minute song!

If you or any of your students plan to travel to Phoenix I highly recommend a visit to the Musical Instrument Museum.  It is very child friendly and even has an Experience Gallery where visitors can try different instruments.

I will close with a quote from Billie R. DeWalt, Ph.D., the MIM President and Director: "At the Musical Instrument Museum, our guests take away from the experience something both simple and profound: an understanding that humans, at all times and in all places, have felt the need to express themselves through creating musical instruments and music.  Despite all the elements that divide us - race, background, ethnicity, politics, religion - there is something that unites us: music as the language of the soul."