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Library of Congress/American Musicological Society Lecture Series: Todd Decker on Show Boat

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Dr. Todd Decker

On Tuesday, March 19, Todd Decker will present another in a series of lectures co-sponsored by the Library of Congress and the American Musicological Society (AMS) intended to showcase research AMS members have conducted using the rich collections of the Music Division of the Library of Congress. Dr. Decker’s lecture, “Making Show Boat: Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, and the Power of Performers,” draws upon his research in the Music Division using the Jerome Kern Collection and the Oscar Hammerstein II Collection, and specifically focuses on how performers cast in the original production of Show Boat shaped development and modification of the show’s musical content.

You can read more information about Dr. Decker’s upcoming lecture on the AMS website. The lecture will be webcast and available to view online in the coming months, as are most previous lectures in the series, with the remainder coming soon:

Judith Tick: “Ruth Crawford Seeger, Modernist Composer in the Folk Revival: Biography as Music History” (Spring 2008)

Annegret Fauser: “After Pearl Harbor: Music, War and the Library of Congress” (Fall 2008)

Jeffrey Magee: “Now It Can Be Told: The Unknown Irving Berlin” (Spring 2009)

Walter Frisch: “Arnold Schoenberg’s Creative Journey, 1897-1912” (Fall 2009)

Steve Swayne: “William Schuman’s Puzzling Seventh Symphony” (Spring 2010)

Anthony Sheppard: “Japanese Influences in 20th-Century American Music” (Fall 2010)

Carol Oja: “Bernstein Meets Broadway” (Spring 2011)

William Meredith: “What the Autograph Can Tell Us: Beethoven’s Sonata in E Major, opus 109” (Fall 2011)   Webcast coming soon

Thomas Brothers: “Louis Armstrong: The Making of a Great Melodist” (Spring 2012)   Webcast coming soon

Barbara Heyman: “Samual Barber: Serendipitous Discoveries” (Fall 2012)  Webcast coming soon

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