Well-Tuned Venues

Meetings & Conventions: Short Cuts July 2002 Current Issue
July 2002
Short Cuts:
Well-Tuned Venues

Take note: Nashville’s new Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

From rock to jazz, classical to blues, there likely is a museum to satisfy every musical taste. At downtown Nashville’s new Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (www.halloffame.org), designed to look like a giant musical note from the air, guests can enjoy professional musicians plucking everything from banjos to 12-string guitars, and even burn their own compact disc as a keepsake. The museum can house events of up to several hundred.

At the Delta Blues Museum (www.deltabluesmuseum.org) in Clarksdale, Miss., visitors trace the musical history of the great river region that gave birth to such legendary blues greats as Sam Cooke, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Head next door to the Ground Zero Blues Club (www.groundzerobluesclub.com) for a private performance of local blues talent. Owned by actor and local citizen Morgan Freeman, the club, named for its address in Zero Blues Alley, seats 200.

And at the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Mo. (www.americanjazzmuseum.com), groups can meet in the 500-seat auditorium to learn about the music of Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald and then step into the museum’s Blue Room, a replica of a famous local jazz club of the same name from the 1930s, to catch a live performance.

• C.A.S.