Venues

TMORA Education Center

5904 Pleasant Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55419

AB Academy of Music is delighted to make the TMORA Education Center the primary home of the Academy and the setting for all ABAM Musical Gatherings.

Located just a mile from The Museum of Russian Art, the TMORA Education Center is a beautiful and unusually intimate setting for making, sharing, and experiencing music. Created as a flexible space for creativity, learning, and community engagement, the Center brings together a gallery, meeting space, and maker space under one roof.

For ABAM, its most extraordinary quality is the meeting of music and visual art.

Participants enter not a conventional classroom or recital hall, but a welcoming gallery space surrounded by artworks from TMORA's collections. Paintings fill the walls; art becomes part of the atmosphere of every gathering. Here, a performance can unfold only a few feet from a work of art, a conversation can continue beside a painting, and musicians and listeners alike are invited to experience one art form in the presence of another.

At the heart of the space are two magnificent grand pianos—a Bösendorfer and a Steinway—giving ABAM performers the rare opportunity to explore two exceptional instruments within the same intimate environment. From Piano Labs and master classes to conversations, workshops, and shared performances, the setting encourages the kind of close listening, curiosity, experimentation, and exchange that are at the heart of ABAM.

The Education Center is designed for people to gather rather than simply to attend. Its warmth and flexibility allow performers, teachers, students, and listeners to be close to one another, creating an atmosphere in which the boundary between performance, learning, conversation, and community can naturally begin to disappear.

Art on the walls. Two beautiful grand pianos. Musicians and listeners gathered together. It is difficult to imagine a more fitting home for AB Academy of Music.

The TMORA Education Center is located at 5904 Pleasant Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55419. The building is wheelchair accessible, with parking available directly in front of the entrance.

The Museum Of Russian Art

5500 Stevens Avenue, Minneapolis, MN  55419

Twice each year, in January and June, AB Academy of Music moves from its intimate home at the TMORA Education Center to the galleries of The Museum of Russian Art for two of the most anticipated events of the ABAM season: the Gala Performances.

On these special evenings, the Museum itself is transformed. In the heart of the Main Gallery, space normally devoted to experiencing visual art becomes an intimate concert setting. Seating appears among the artworks, a piano takes its place in the gallery, and performers and audience gather together surrounded by the Museum’s changing exhibitions. It is difficult to imagine a more memorable place to perform.

The Museum of Russian Art has a long tradition of bringing music into its galleries, presenting classical concerts and other performances in the midst of its exhibitions. For ABAM musicians, becoming part of that tradition is both an honor and an extraordinary artistic opportunity.

Where Music and Art Share the Stage

A Gala at TMORA is unlike a performance in a conventional concert hall. There is no distant stage separating performer and listener. Instead, music unfolds within the gallery itself, surrounded by paintings, objects, colors, histories, and stories. The audience sits close. The art remains present. Each exhibition changes the visual world of the performance, so no two Gala evenings can ever feel exactly alike.

For a young musician in particular, performing in such a setting can be unforgettable. The experience asks a performer to do more than play beautifully: to communicate, to hold a room, to share an artistic idea, and to become part of a larger encounter between music, visual art, and audience.

A Special Opportunity for ABAM Performers

The January and June Gala Performances represent some of ABAM’s most distinguished performance opportunities.

For performers, this is a chance to experience the excitement and responsibility of presenting music on a special occasion: preparing repertoire with purpose, walking into a transformed gallery, facing an audience, and offering something they have worked carefully to create.

For listeners, it is an opportunity to experience these musicians differently as well—to hear them not in a class or working session, but as artists presenting finished performances in a remarkable setting.

Two Celebrations in the ABAM Year

The January Gala marks a beautiful midpoint in the Academy year: a moment to gather, celebrate artistic growth, and hear selected performers share their work.

The June Gala brings the season toward its culmination, celebrating the musicians, relationships, discoveries, and artistic development that have unfolded throughout the year.

For ABAM, these evenings embody something at the heart of the Academy itself: the belief that music becomes especially meaningful when it is shared—with other artists, with an audience, and in a space alive with art.

A museum becomes a concert hall. The gallery becomes a stage. And for one evening, our musicians become part of the art that fills the room.