World City Guide

Culture

The cultural scene in Memphis is dominated by popular music. It was here that W C Handy wrote ‘Memphis Blues’ and the young Elvis Presley was exposed to the black music that so influenced him. When Presley was discovered by Sun Records in the early 1950s, his distinctive sound took the country by storm and rock ’n’ roll was born. In the 1960s, Memphis recording studio Stax Records (website: www.soulsvilleusa.com) helped to develop a new sound that had its roots in the civil rights movement. This was soul music. There are still several recording studios in Memphis and the city continues to inspire musicians, such as Irish band U2, who recorded some tracks for their Rattle and Hum album at Sun Studio.

There are two main performance venues in the city. The new FedExForum, 191 Beale Street (tel: (901) 205 1535; website: www.fedexforum.com) opened in October 2004, is the home of the NBA Grizzlies, the University of Memphis Tigers basketball team, and is a major venue for concerts and special events such as boxing and world wrestling. Mud Island Amphitheatre, 125 North Front Street (tel: (800) 507 6507 or (901) 576 7241; website: www.mudisland.com), is a popular setting for outdoor concerts. The main performing arts venue is a restored vaudeville palace, the Orpheum Theatre, 203 Main Street (tel: (901) 525 3000; website: www.orpheum-memphis.com).

The Memphis Cook Convention Centre, 255 North Main Street (tel: (800) 726 0915; website: www.memphisconvention.com), completed its US$92-million expansion project and in January 2003 opened the world-class Cannon Centre for the Performing Arts (website: www.thecannoncenter.com). The 2,100-seat facility is the home of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, and hosts a multitude of other events including ballet, opera, pop and jazz concerts. The 32-storey steel Pyramid Arena, One Auction Avenue (tel: (901) 521 9675; website: www.pyramidarena.com), once the main concert and sporting venue in town, is now used as a soundstage and construction mill, as well as changing exhibits in the WONDERS International Cultural Series (website: www.wonders.org). The Pyramid will feature in the next Craig Brewer movie, Black Snake Moan, starring Samuel L Jackson.

The Memphis Flyer is a free weekly publication that is available throughout the city. The main ticket agency is TicketMaster (tel: (901) 525 1515).

Music: The Memphis Symphony Orchestra (tel: (901) 324 3627; website: www.memphissymphony.org) is well established and performs both classical and pop concerts from September to early May. Their permanent home is the Cannon Centre for the Performing Arts. Germantown Performing Arts Centre, 1801 Exeter Road (tel: (901) 757 7500; website: www.gpacweb.com) hosts a variety of professional world-class performers and is home to the IRIS Chamber Orchestra. Opera Memphis (tel: (901) 257 3100; website: www.operamemphis.org) is the state’s largest professional opera company. It performs at the Orpheum Theatre (see above), and the company stages four productions each year.

Theatre: Memphis has a lively theatre scene. For professional productions, there is the Playhouse on the Square, 51 South Cooper Street (tel: (901) 726 4656; website: www.playhouseonthesquare.org), which stages a large number of Broadway musicals. It has a sister theatre, Circuit Playhouse, 1705 Poplar Avenue (tel: (901) 726 5523), which offers still more plays and the occasional premiere. For highly respected community theatre, there is Theatre Memphis, 630 Perkins Extended (tel: (901) 682 8601/8323; website: www.theatrememphis.org), which presents everything from Broadway plays to alternative works.

Dance: Thanks to professional dance company Ballet Memphis (tel: (901) 737 7322; website: www.balletmemphis.org), the city also has a reputation for top-quality dance performance. The company includes national and international award-winning dancers and stages contemporary ballets by choreographers such as Trey McIntyre, as well as classical works like The Nutcracker and Giselle. Performances take place at the Orpheum Theatre (see above).

Film: There is no shortage of cinemas in Memphis and it is possible to watch anything from the latest Hollywood blockbusters to art house movies. Studio on the Square, 2105 Court Street (tel: (901) 725 7151; website: www.malco.com), has five screens showing alternative, foreign and speciality films. Other cinemas showing mainstream films include the 22-screen theatre at Peabody Place, Second Street; Stage Cinema, Germantown; The Majestic, Winchester at Riverdale; and Wolfchase Galleria, Germantown. There is also a 3-D IMAX cinema at the Pink Palace Museum, 3050 Central Avenue (tel: (901) 763 4629). Peabody Place also houses a 21-screen cinema and a 3-D IMAX.

Memphis is rapidly becoming a favourite with location hunters, and a number of films have been shot in the city in recent years. These include Jim Jarmusch’s cult film Mystery Train (1989), about a group of Japanese tourists who come to Memphis for the blues, and Cookie’s Fortune (1999), a Robert Altman murder mystery. A number of film adaptations of John Grisham’s books have also been filmed here, including Sidney Pollack’s 1993 film The Firm, starring Tom Cruise; The Client (1993) and The Rainmaker (1997). Other notable films include Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks (2000) and Walk the Line (2004).

Literary Notes: It was in Memphis that the career of the acclaimed playwright, Tennessee Williams, began. He wrote his first play, Cairo! Shanghai! Bombay! here in 1935, and it was premiered in a Memphis theatre. ‘Then and there the theatre and I found each other, for better and for worse,’ he wrote later. Not surprisingly, the Memphis music scene has inspired a number of books, including Another Good Loving Blues (1994), Arthur Flowers’ book about a blues singer’s move to Beale Street in the 1920s, when the blues was the hottest music around. Memphis is also the setting for many of the novels of John Grisham, who practised law in Southaven, a Memphis suburb, for 10 years and who uses the city as an atmospheric backdrop to his plot-driven bestsellers. These legal thrillers include The Firm (1993), The Client (1994) and The Rainmaker (1997).