Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center

I briefly considered attending RPI but while the school is great I just couldn’t get into the city. But I did enjoy EMPAC. I attended several lectures, live performances and movies there and the experience was always great. A true treasure in Upstate New York

It’s a great hall, with world-​class acoustics and comfortable seating. Parking is a bit atrocious and it can be confusing to find your way around in the building.
The best way to actually get to the main theater is to park in the garage halfway up College Ave and then walk back around to the main entrance (it’s a little traffic circle). Once inside, take the elevators DOWN to get to the main floor where the café and the main entrance to the concert hall are.
If you’re confused about where your event is, ask at the desk just to the right of the main entrance before you start meandering around the building.
I’ve been to student music group concerts and a few other events in the varying spaces at EMPAC and enjoyed all of the things I’ve seen there so far. There are definitely some interesting ideas being explored in the Center. That being said, it would be nice if some more «mainstream» events were chosen for this hall to be more accessible to students. Many of the RPI students and alums in the area have not even entered the hall that they have paid so much for, and that’s a darn shame.

On the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), EMPAC stands out as very impressive when viewing the Troy skyline from the west side of the Hudson River.
Some early reviewers have been disappointed that this facility was not being utilized as an entertainment venue. Certainly, «entertainment» is in the eye of the beholder, but there should be no excuse for such complaints any longer. Laurie Anderson is among those who have performed here and my first and recent visit was to attend a program called «Pianoply.» Five (5) different pianos were performed on by four (4) different artists in four (4) acoustically different rooms. It was a wonderfully entertaining and educational introduction to EMPAC.
Check out their schedule and find something to attend. Many programs are even free, as is the evening parking in a nearby garage off College Ave.

This is a beautiful building, but like many pieces of art, seems to look better than it functions. As the other reviewer said, it’s tough to navigate. Better be in good shape to climb all those stairs, or know how to get access to the secret elevator for the bottom levels. Really? Engineers & architects and that was a result? Lovely to behold, though, especially from outside.

Wow. way to build a high tech super sophisticated building in the middle of a ghetto, and then do nothing of substance with it.

I like to go to the dance series that they have here. The first time I went I wanted to gnaw my arm off because it was gosh-​darn awful. But the last time I went to see a vertical performance it was excellent (my gentleman friend even enjoyed it).
I have yet to be in the main theater, but the smaller theater and black box studios are pretty awesome. It is surprising to have such amazing performance spaces at an engineering school (but maybe I’m being myopic).
All in all I like it and its a cool space that has some hits and some misses.

Man oh man, getting inside is a love/​hate thing: If you park on 8^th street and walk up the five hundred thousand stairs to get to the main theaters, you’ll hate EMPAC. If you park in RPI’s garage, you’ll love it.
EMPAC offers a very eclectic menu of contemporary performance artists as well as visual installations by fairly esoteric up and comers. Its reach is so broad that I find a few amazing nuggets in any season’s scheduling. Last season had a knockout rare live performance of Steve Reich’s seminal «Music for 18 Musicians.»
This season, while film fans malingered toward Schenectady and Ryan Gosling, film geeks at EMPAC saw a reimagined showing of Guy Maddin’s
«Tales from the Gimli Hospital» with a new score by Matthew Patton, performed live by members of Sigur Ros, and accompanied by three world-​class foley artists. Maddin, arguably the most inventive filmmaker working today, was present and cordial enough to yammer away with me for a while.
You guys are just nuts if you don’t take advantage of this venue.