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The new edition of Music Gallery opens Edison — House of Music

The new edition of Music Gallery opens Edison — House of Music

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The new edition of Music Gallery opens Edison — House of Music
The former Steaua Roșie Cinema reopens as a house of music in Cluj-Napoca

On 17 October, from 19:00, Cluj marks a new cultural first: Music Gallery, Romania’s first music-focused gallery, reopens in a venue with over 120 years of history — Edison — House of Music, on Strada Paris, corner with Ploiești.
The project transforms the former Steaua Roșie cinema into a cultural hub dedicated to music and community, continuing the mission of the Fapte team (organisers of Jazz in the Park) to bring art closer to people and to return cultural spaces to the city.

Music Gallery is Romania’s first and only art exhibition dedicated to music. Conceived as an interactive gallery, it offers visitors an immersive experience of what lies behind musical creation, with a focus on high-quality listening (Hi-Fi), music education, and understanding music’s cultural context. The curatorial foundation starts from jazz and its influences, while the format blends visual art with technology and storytelling.

“We’re about to start what is probably the most challenging project in Fapte’s history: opening our own space, exactly as we imagine it. We want it to become a meeting place for our community of music lovers and people who care about meaningful things. Music Gallery is a project that, at one point, truly saved us in difficult times, and now we have the courage to make it permanent in the city. It’s in a place I walked past countless times as a child, and it still feels incredible that today it’s ours. It’s a beautiful challenge and a great responsibility. We need the community’s support — and we hope we’ll have it.” — Alin Vaida, General Manager, Fapte

A building with history and a new story
Built in the early 1900s for the Hungarian community, the Edison building became, after World War II, the Steaua Roșiecinema. During the communist period it remained a space of uniformity; after 1989, it changed purpose several times, eventually falling into neglect.
Today, the building returns to life as Edison — House of Music, thanks to the organisers of Jazz in the Park, keeping a link with history and with inventor Thomas Edison, who changed forever how we listen to music through the phonograph.

Music Gallery — Jazz Around the World
The 2025 exhibition theme, “Jazz Around the World,” explores the diversity and global impact of jazz. Visitors embark on a sonic journey from the genre’s birth to the defining moments of its evolution, tracing how jazz transformed across continents — Europe, South America, Asia — and how each culture made it its own. Key installations include:

  • Jazz Around the World installation — an interactive multimedia globe with 25 musical points where you can plug in your headphones and discover jazz from every corner of the world.
  • Vinyl Mediatheque — a dedicated area to listen attentively on headphones to any record on display, from classics to contemporary releases.
  • VR Concert — virtual-reality experiences that place you, for the first time, in the middle of a live performance.
  • Hall of Fame — a section dedicated to artists who defined the history of jazz.
  • Playroom — a try-out area for instruments: piano, guitar, and drums.
  • Listening Room — a sound-insulated room equipped with Hi-Fi systems for impeccable listening.

What makes Music Gallery different
Unlike festivals or concerts, Music Gallery presents music in a visual and interactive format. Visitors can stay as long as they wish, return, and explore each installation freely.
The exhibition is designed for all ages — from children and teenagers discovering instruments to vinyl collectors and sound enthusiasts. Its aim is to humanise music, presenting it not only as an artistic phenomenon, but as a story, a context, and a social experience.

Three pillars structure the exhibition:

  • Listen — what to listen to and how to listen: a mediatheque of essential albums, vinyl playback, and Hi-Fi systems.
  • Learn — history, social and artistic contexts, how jazz influenced — and was influenced by — other genres.
  • Explore — access to equipment and installations the public rarely encounters: Hi-Fi set-ups, instrument simulators, multimedia collaborations.

A special project within the exhibition is Ora de Muzică (Music Class), dedicated to pupils. They can join 50-minute guided tours, interactive and educational, organised Tuesday to Friday. Bookings: contact@musicgallery.ro.

Weekly events at Edison — House of Music
Throughout the two-month exhibition period, the organisers will test the space’s possibilities and, together with the public, explore what it means to bring an old building back to life through music.
Every week brings something new: live concerts every Thursday, weekend mini-festivals, intimate concerts in the speakeasy bar, vinyl fairs, DJ sessions, cine-concerts, or morning foyer concerts. For moments of quiet, an upstairs Hi-Fi listening room awaits, where you can hear music in its purest quality. There will also be children’s workshops, educational events, and a series of gatherings that help us better understand why music has the power to bring people together.
The venue will also feature a Pop-Up Olivo Coffee Culture café animating the foyer and atmosphere — good coffee, good music, and good conversations.

Official opening
Music Gallery opens on 17 October, at 19:00, at Edison — House of Music (Strada Paris, corner with Ploiești). Visitors will be able to see both the exhibition and the building’s transformation — a former cinema becoming, for the first time, a house of music.
Tickets for the exhibition will be available soon at www.musicgallery.ro and on site.

About Music Gallery and Fapte
Music Gallery is a project created during the pandemic by the Jazz in the Park team as an alternative form of music education and exploration. The exhibition presents genres, artists, and sound technologies in an accessible, engaging format.
Launched in 2023 in Cluj and Iași, where it attracted over 7,500 visitors, the exhibition was later showcased in special versions at Jazz in the Park and Jazz in the Park Competition. In 2025, Music Gallery sets off on a national tour to six cities together with the NEPI Rockcastle network, reaching Bucharest, Ploiești, Constanța, Timișoara, Craiova, and Sibiu.
The exhibition is produced by Fapte, organiser of Jazz in the Park, an association founded in Cluj-Napoca in 2012. Fapte’s mission is to make art accessible to the general public and to revive the city’s forgotten spaces through culture. For the Music Gallery project, the association received two Silver awards at the Romanian PR Award, in the Culture & Arts and Events & Experiential Marketing categories.

Presented by: Fapte, Jazz in the Park, Edison — House of Music
Funded by: AFCN; Cluj-Napoca City Hall and Local Council; LIVEMX — co-funded by the European Union
Partners: 8×8, Yamaha, Meze Audio, Acoustic Density, Audio-Technica, Olivo Coffee Culture, MobilaDalin, Daisler Print House, Explore Architecture, Byron, Im Artimm
Media partners: Rock FM, TVR Cultural, TVR Cluj, The Woman, Kolozsvári Rádió, Ziarul Metropolis, România Pozitivă, Ziua de Cluj, Cluj24, Visit Cluj, Cluj Live

MUSIC GALLERY opening at EDISON – House of Music

MUSIC GALLERY opening at EDISON – House of Music

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It’s been 10 years since we started dreaming about opening our own space.
A place where our community can gather.
A place to host concerts and bring in great people, whose stories we can learn from and be inspired by.

Opening  a space like this  isn’t easy. This is why there aren’t so many.
In fact, it’s much harder than running a festival.
Different financial challenges. A different kind of management. New ways of working we weren’t used to. But that won’t stop us.

Last year, we rented the former “Steaua Roșie” cinema, on Paris Street.
After more than a year of planning, budgeting  and conversations, we feel it’s time to open the doors and share this beginning with you.

The building will reclaim its old name: Edison.
It’s a name with history and meaning. Edison invented the phonograph – the ancestor of the modern turntable – and changed forever how we listen to music. That’s exactly what we want to do: give the city back a place where music can be experienced differently.

Edison will bring together, under the same roof, all of our projects:
Jazz in the Park –  its energy and its music,
Music Gallery –  turning the former cinema hall into a permanent exhibition,
Pop-up Jazz Club –  the experiment through which we created temporary jazz clubs in unconventional spaces, meant to conclude once we finally have a place of our own.

We don’t have a perfect place.
We have an old building, with cracked walls and forgotten stories.
We don’t have all the answers. We’re nervous-excited, full of questions, and ready for plenty of trial and error.

But we have a dream.
To make Edison a house of music.
A place where stories come to life.
Where jazz meets the world.
Where everyone is welcome.

Between October 17 and December 7 we’ll open this house for the first time.
Not everything will be ready, and that’s exactly what we want to share with you: the beginning, the imperfections, the process.
A test. To see how well our dream fits the place, the neighbors, the city.

We’re nervous.
We’re excited.
We’re just crazy enough to make this place real.
We need you. We want you to be part of the story.

How wonderful it could be. And how wonderful that we’re here together, now, at the beginning.

Let the fun begin. Stay tuned!
— Fapte Team

Music Gallery, Romania’s only exhibition dedicated entirely to music, goes on tour across 6 cities!

Music Gallery, Romania’s only exhibition dedicated entirely to music, goes on tour across 6 cities!

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This autumn, Music Gallery hits the road in a new and surprising format, hosted inside 6 shopping centers across Romania. Under the theme “Music Around the World,” the exhibition offers an interactive and educational experience where music becomes a cultural guide, a tool for discovery, and a source of emotion.

At the heart of the exhibition lies a large globe-shaped installation featuring 25 listening zones, each representing a country from a different continent. Visitors can plug in a pair of headphones and hear music fragments that reflect the cultural identity of that region—American blues, Pakistani qawwali, Nordic jazz, Romanian doina, or Brazilian bossa nova. The setup invites slow-paced exploration, in a relaxed and welcoming environment.

The experience is completed by 12 curated stories, each showing how a musical genre shaped a culture or captured the spirit of an era. From the griot traditions of West Africa to jazz in Prohibition-era speakeasies, from Japan’s silent listening culture to protest expressed through tango—these stories offer visitors a global perspective on the transformative power of music.

Alongside the thematic content, the exhibition also features piano and drum simulators, vinyl listening stations, and a VR installation showcasing legendary musicians.

In every city on the tour, Music Gallery also includes a special hands-on event: Drum Camp – a vibrant and inclusive music activation where the public is invited to experiment with drums and percussion in a fun, collective format. It’s an energetic and joyful activity that turns rhythm into community—even for those with no musical experience at all.

Entry to Music Gallery is free via the SPOT app, and the full tour schedule is as follows:

  • Bucharest – Mega Mall, September 4–14
  • Ploiești – Shopping City, September 16–28
  • Constanța – City Park Mall, September 30 – October 12
  • Timișoara – Shopping City, October 23 – November 2
  • Craiova – Promenada, November 4–16
  • Sibiu – Promenada, November 18–30

Participation also comes with a surprise: in each city, visitors can enter a raffle via the SPOT app to win a pair of Meze 99 Classics headphones—renowned for their warm sound and elegant design. At the end of the tour, all entries will automatically be included in a national draw for the grand prize: an Estelio Hi-Fi home audio system—a premium listening setup for those who want to hear music the way the artist intended.