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By: Pat Padua
Music and poetry are two sides of artistic expression that are often inseparable – in the nomenclature of today’s youth, they are indeed Best Friends Forever. April is National Poetry Month, a designation first made in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets in New York. As the month winds down, In the Muse sets anchor …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Jennifer Gavin
Audrey Fischer of the Library’s Public Affairs Office offers this guest blog item for Saturday: April 24 marks the Library’s 210th anniversary. Let it be said that the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution keeps getting better with age. In 2000, the Library of Congress celebrated its bicentennial. That same year it embarked on a mission …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Matt Raymond
The history of our nation — from the earliest settlers through the present day — is a story of ambition and resilience, a story of human ingenuity conquering the impossible. In its new epic series “America The Story of Us,” which premieres Sunday night (April 25) at 9 p.m. EDT, HISTORY will retell the extraordinary …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Pat Padua
In the Muse has regularly featured photographs from the William P. Gottlieb Collection when commemorating the birthdays of jazz greats like Billie Holiday, Django Reinhardt, and Ben Webster. But that’s not all that’s in the collection. Today, the observed birthday of William Shakespeare, enjoy this photograph, which originally appeared in Down Beat magazine in 1947 …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Pat Padua
Charles Mingus was born in Nogales, Arizona on April 22, 1922. The first instrument he played was the trombone, a sound he always liked – trombonist Jimmy Knepper was one of the defining voices of many a Mingus ensemble. But it was with the bass that Mingus found his voice. Inspired by Ellington bassist Jimmy …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Pat Padua
If you missed the news over on the Library of Congress Blog, the Library announced that they will digitally archive the public record of the latest iteration of the tin-can and wire: Twitter. While we in the Music Division are still holding on to our telephone machines and pedalling to work on our velocipedes, this …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Pat Padua
“Jazz to me is a living music. It’s a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.” Those are the words of tenor saxophone great Dexter Gordon, born in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 1923. Gordon performed with Lionel Hampton’s and Louis Armstrong’s bands in the 1940s, and …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Pat Padua
Afro-Cuban singer Graciela Perez-Grillo passed away in New York on April 7th. She was 94. Born in Havana, Perez-Grillo moved to New York in 1942, where she played bass and sang with an all-female band before fronting the Afro-Cuban orchestra with her stepbrother Machito. See photos of the woman known as the First Lady of …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Matt Raymond
Quite often I have to “sit on” very exciting news here until all the details are put into place, and whatever we’re going to announce is ready for prime-time. Such is the case with the new version of our Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC, pronounced “P-pock”), which has launched within the past few days. …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Pat Padua
The following post is taken in part from an article written by Susan Clermont, Music Specialist, for the Performing Arts Encyclopedia. Like no other American sport, baseball has been glorified and preserved in musical form by inspired songwriters and poets since its beginnings. In 1858, the year when amateur baseball teams in the northeast established …
Posted in: In The Muse