The Musical Instrument Museum in North Phoenix is plugging in this weekend, turning its galleries into a two-day showcase of synthesizers, DJ sets and hands-on science demonstrations built around the history and future of electronic music. Celebrate Electronic Music runs Saturday, Aug. 8, and Sunday, Aug. 9, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with performances, workshops and interactive exhibits spread across the museum's campus at 4725 E. Mayo Blvd.
The event is free with regular museum admission or for MIM members, according to Phoenix New Times. Regular admission runs between $10 and $20. MIM's curator of education, Mike Silvers, described the weekend as a chance to trace electronic music's reach across disciplines, saying the event tells a global electronic-music story that bridges science, composition and dance music, per the same report.
Electronic music, broadly defined as music made around the world by combining traditional instruments with electronics and computer music, sits at the center of the programming. Visitors can create their own instruments, try out vintage synthesizers, and learn how technology has reshaped modern music over the past century, the outlet notes.
Synths, Science and a Century of Sound
MIM Senior Curator Rich Walter, who oversees the museum's holdings in historic electric instruments, synthesizers and American stringed instruments according to the Fretboard Journal, will lead a session Saturday exploring vintage synthesizers pulled from MIM's own collection. Assistant Professor Fernanda Aoki Navarro of Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts is also scheduled to discuss electronic music's history over the last century that same day, before performing her own set during the weekend.
Navarro, a Brazilian-born composer specializing in electroacoustic music and experimental media, joined ASU in 2020 after a fellowship at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, according to Arizona State University. The Arizona Science Center will add its own layer to the weekend Sunday with a live demonstration of how electricity generates sound, featuring a Van de Graaff generator and a miniature Tesla coil, as reported by the Paradise Valley Independent.
DJ Sets, Live Bands and Beat-Making Workshops
Beyond the science and history lessons, the weekend leans hard into performance. AZ Beat Lab will lead an interactive beat-making workshop using digital samplers on Saturday, while Midnite Club and Casey Zanni are booked to perform at the event's dance parties, which feature EDM sets from local DJs each day.
Live sets are also planned from Phoenix-based electronic jazz composer Garrison Jones and from Prescott indie pop duo Dutch Holly, who take the stage Saturday. Dutch Holly has performed at venues throughout Arizona since 2015, blending glowing synthesizers, pre-programmed beats and looping effects with indie pop songwriting, according to the New Times report. Tres Ikner of the duo told the outlet that Dutch Holly uses electronic music as a creative tool rather than a genre, adding that using orchestral sounds, tablas, guitars and other sounds gave the group freedom to approach its songs' vision. Ikner also said electronic music offers many ways to perform without ever touching a turntable.
A $250 Million Home for a Global Instrument Collection
The programming unfolds inside a facility built for exactly this kind of cross-genre experimentation. MIM opened in April 2010 in North Phoenix, spanning 200,000 square feet and costing more than $250 million to build, making it the world's largest museum dedicated to musical instruments, according to Wikipedia. The museum was founded by former Target Corporation CEO Robert J. Ulrich, who conceived and funded the project after visiting a similarly named museum in Brussels, Belgium.
MIM's permanent collection holds more than 14,000 musical instruments and artifacts from nearly 200 countries and territories, with between 6,000 and 7,000 items on display at any given time, per Visit Arizona. Among the early electronic instruments in that collection is the theremin, invented by Russian physicist Leon Theremin in 1920 and patented in 1928, an instrument that generates tone through electromagnetic fields without any physical contact.
The museum's 300-seat MIM Music Theater hosts roughly 200 live concerts a year, a track record that has drawn major touring acts to North Phoenix. In January, percussionist Sheila E. performed four shows across two nights at MIM ahead of her headlining appearance at the Tucson Jazz Festival, as Hoodline previously reported.
Part of a Broader Electronic Music Wave in Phoenix
Celebrate Electronic Music also lands amid a broader surge in electronic and dance music across the Valley. Phoenix's dance and electronic music scene has expanded rapidly, highlighted by the M3F festival's 2026 announcement that it will shift entirely to an EDM format for its 2027 edition at Steele Indian School Park, a move Hoodline detailed in its recent coverage of the nonprofit festival's lineup shift toward acts like Joji and Fisher. MIM's weekend event, framed by curator Mike Silvers as a story spanning science, composition and dance music, positions the museum's synthesizer archives and live DJ sets within that same regional momentum, even as it keeps one foot planted in more than a century of instrument history.
