Collection of Musical Instruments to reopen with new brass exhibition
With extensive exterior renovations complete, the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments is preparing to reopen its doors to the University community and the public. The collection has been closed since May 2019 while much-needed improvements were made to the building exterior. The Collection of Musical Instruments will reopen, officially, on Tuesday, Feb. 25.
While not all the collection’s exhibits will be on view immediately, a new exhibition, Resounding Brass: Conch Shells to Silver Trumpet, will be on view through the end of the calendar year. The exhibition features instruments from the collection’s holdings and instruments from individual collectors and other Yale University museums. A private viewing of Resounding Brass will be held tonight. The collection’s holding of keyboard instruments will also be accessible to the public.
Tomorrow at noon, Sir Jonathan Mills, visiting professor of music at the Yale School of Music, will give a lecture at the collection titled “A Night at the Museum: A Composer’s Homage to a Collection of Historical Instruments,” in which Mills, a composer and the longtime director of the Edinburgh International Festival, will “evaluate the true meaning of the instruments and the musical resources that we take for granted as part of our musical heritage.”
Prof. Mills’ lecture is free and open to the public.
Concerts at the collection will resume on April 1 with a performance, by members of the Smithsonian Chamber Players, of music by Franz Schubert. The series will continue with presentations related to Resounding Brass.
