Ben Apfelbaum

ELECTRIC KEYS EXHIBITION @ POWERHOUSE MUSEUM

The keyboard has evolved over the last six hundred years. Instrument designers and makers have explored ways to improve the manufacture and tone of higher quality, more reliable and accessible instruments.

Over the past seventy years the humble piano and organ have been complemented by using new materials and technologies generating sounds that reflect the music of our times. 

The range of keyboards on display commences with an instrument manufactured in 1629 to one manufactured in 1996. 

The exhibition is further subdivided into the electro-mechanical keyboards, the mechanical to electronic, and finally the synthesisers.

A further charming quirk of the exhibition is that as you walk past the instruments in a defined order you will hear examples of these instruments being played in various, very popular and familiar pop songs.

The exhibition ELECTRIC KEYS is free and is currently on at the Powerhouse Museum.

 

 

Article and photos by Ben Apfelbaum

 

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.