Dragons and Vines: Inlaid Guitar Masterpieces presents a collection of instruments featuring stunning inlay design created by the greatest contemporary North American inlay artists and luthiers. The exhibition is presented by MIM in partnership with the Maryland-based inlay company Pearl Works, with the majority of the pieces coming from the private collection of Larry Sifel (1948–2006), the company’s founder.

Each of the instruments vividly illustrates the transformation of bold imagination into reality, from snarling dragons to delicate floral patterns as well as re-creations of historic artwork and hot-rod automobiles. Some of the instruments go beyond sheer refinement of the artwork and actually tell the stories of the artists. All of the instruments displayed are of limited edition or one-of-a-kind creations, many of which have never before been on public display.

This special exhibition consists of guitars, banjos, and one ukulele, featuring inlaid artwork created from materials including abalone shell, mother-of-pearl, coral, gold, copper, wood, and others. These materials are manually fitted onto the instruments with diligent precision, transforming each one into a unique masterpiece.

#ScalesandStrings

Introduce your child to the wide and wonderful world of music through MIM’s early childhood music and movement courses. Explore music from around the globe with your children while singing, dancing, and playing instruments. Designed for children and caregivers, each four-week session explores a new musical culture in engaging ways. Motor, pre-language, and musical skills are developed simultaneously, while children actively participate in the music making. This session’s classes will focus on African sounds. Classes are taught by Katie Palmer.

Each class is structured around developmentally appropriate activities for the children to interact with and create their own music. By exploring music through song, dance, and basic instruments, children develop musical and social skills. Early childhood music programs are also proven to foster physical, emotional, and cognitive growth.

Reservations are required; first come, first served. Due to space limitations, only one child and one adult per ticket will be allowed to participate. Please register for the session that is age-appropriate for your child. However, MIM understands that younger or older siblings may need to attend class with a brother or sister. Thus, Mini Music Makers encourages participation of all children in the class, even those outside the age group. Because space and resources are limited, we ask that you register siblings whose ages fall within one year of the suggested age range.

Please contact Katherine Palmer at programs@MIM.org or 480.245.6962 with any questions.


RESCHEDULING

In the event of sickness or extenuating circumstances, please contact programs@MIM.org before your scheduled Mini Music Makers class time. You will be rescheduled into a future class at no additional cost. Absence notices received after the purchased class time will not qualify for rescheduling.

Introduce your child to the wide and wonderful world of music through MIM’s early childhood music and movement courses. Explore music from around the globe with your children while singing, dancing, and playing instruments. Designed for children and caregivers, each four-week session explores a new musical culture in engaging ways. Motor, pre-language, and musical skills are developed simultaneously, while children actively participate in the music making. This session’s classes will focus on African sounds. Classes are taught by Katie Palmer.

Each class is structured around developmentally appropriate activities for the children to interact with and create their own music. By exploring music through song, dance, and basic instruments, children develop musical and social skills. Early childhood music programs are also proven to foster physical, emotional, and cognitive growth.

Reservations are required; first come, first served. Due to space limitations, only one child and one adult per ticket will be allowed to participate. Please register for the session that is age-appropriate for your child. However, MIM understands that younger or older siblings may need to attend class with a brother or sister. Thus, Mini Music Makers encourages participation of all children in the class, even those outside the age group. Because space and resources are limited, we ask that you register siblings whose ages fall within one year of the suggested age range.

Please contact Katherine Palmer at programs@MIM.org or 480.245.6962 with any questions.


RESCHEDULING

In the event of sickness or extenuating circumstances, please contact programs@MIM.org before your scheduled Mini Music Makers class time. You will be rescheduled into a future class at no additional cost. Absence notices received after the purchased class time will not qualify for rescheduling.

Pick up your MIMkids Passport and embark on a musical journey with MIMkids Musical Adventures, an educational program designed for kids aged 6–10. Participants will discover new cultures by actively participating in music making, creating musical instruments, and exploring MIM’s exhibits—with a designated tour guide, of course! Each session focuses on a different continent, giving participants a well-rounded overview of music from around the world and an opportunity to collect MIMkids passport stamps.

This session focuses on Tanzania and participants will make chisekese frame rattles.

Scholarship Application


Please contact Katherine Palmer at 480.245.6962 or programs@MIM.org with questions.
Space is limited; reservations are required. No refunds.

Introduce your child to the wide and wonderful world of music through MIM’s early childhood music and movement courses. Explore music from around the globe with your children while singing, dancing, and playing instruments. Designed for children and caregivers, each four-week session explores a new musical culture in engaging ways. Motor, pre-language, and musical skills are developed simultaneously, while children actively participate in the music making. This session’s classes will focus on African sounds. Classes are taught by Katie Palmer.

Each class is structured around developmentally appropriate activities for the children to interact with and create their own music. By exploring music through song, dance, and basic instruments, children develop musical and social skills. Early childhood music programs are also proven to foster physical, emotional, and cognitive growth.

Reservations are required; first come, first served. Due to space limitations, only one child and one adult per ticket will be allowed to participate. Please register for the session that is age-appropriate for your child. However, MIM understands that younger or older siblings may need to attend class with a brother or sister. Thus, Mini Music Makers encourages participation of all children in the class, even those outside the age group. Because space and resources are limited, we ask that you register siblings whose ages fall within one year of the suggested age range.

Please contact Katherine Palmer at programs@MIM.org or 480.245.6962 with any questions.


RESCHEDULING

In the event of sickness or extenuating circumstances, please contact programs@MIM.org before your scheduled Mini Music Makers class time. You will be rescheduled into a future class at no additional cost. Absence notices received after the purchased class time will not qualify for rescheduling.

Hailed by Rolling Stone as “a genre unto herself,” composer and guitarist Kaki King is a true iconoclast. Over the past ten years, the Brooklyn-based artist has released six extraordinarily diverse and distinctive albums and performed with such icons as Foo Fighters, Timbaland, and the Mountain Goats. She has also contributed to a variety of film and TV soundtracks, including Golden Globe–nominated work on Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, and played to an increasingly fervent following of music lovers on innumerable world tours.

In addition to her own solo work, King sometimes performs accompanied by the string quartet ETHEL, based in New York City. She also recently premiered a classical piece commissioned by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer David Lang at Carnegie Hall.

The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body is King’s latest full-length album, which has turned into a groundbreaking new multimedia performance. It debuted at Brooklyn’s acclaimed BRIC Arts/Media House in New York City in 2014. Provocative and moving, surprising and beautiful, The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body is Kaki King at her visionary best: deconstructing and redefining the role of a solo instrumental artist through virtuoso technique, insatiable imagination, and boundless humanity. This performance uses projection mapping to present the guitar as an ontological tabula rasa in a creation myth unlike any other. It deliberately blurs the lines between sound and vision, and between musician and instrument.

Created in collaboration with Glowing Pictures—a visual design company best known for its work with such artists as Animal Collective, David Byrne and Brian Eno, Beastie Boys, and TV on the Radio—The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body lays bare the guitar’s inner life and protean power as well as its incalculable possibility and perpetual presence in our deepest unconscious. Luminous visions of genesis and death, textures and skins, are cast onto King’s signature Ovation Adamas 1581-KK six-string acoustic guitar customized specifically for this production. The guitar gradually evolves, taking on a living, breathing existence of its own.

“The guitar is a shape-shifter,” King says, “something that plays all types of music and really fills all kinds of roles. It’s not always the six-string guitar that we all know and love. I’ve been playing guitar for more than 30 years. It’s who I am and if anything, this project has made me even more familiar with it.”

With her latest album, she’s found yet another new way to do what she always seems to do—to find great music in a guitar and play it like very, very few people can.

—Huffington Post

New Guitar God.

—Rolling Stone