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Archive: August 2010 (15 Posts)

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Happy Birthday Prez and Bird

Posted by: Pat Padua

Today, as will happen every other Friday for the next several months, additional batches of photographs from the William P. Gottlieb Collection have been uploaded to Flickr . This week’s set is particularly varied, with classic portraits of Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, Tommy Dorsey,  Doris Day, Nat “King” Cole, and Perry Como.  In addition to these portraits are …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Sherman’s March to the Sea

Posted by: Pat Padua

The following blog post is by Mark Zelesky, recent graduate of the School of Library and Information Science, Louisiana State University. During our internship, my colleagues and I in the Junior Fellows internship discovered several items that highlight the diversity of materials collected by the Library of Congress. For ten weeks, we processed materials from …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Leonard Bernstein – Defining the American Classical Music Experience

Posted by: Pat Padua

The following blog post was written by Daniel Walshaw, Music Division. Wild, passionate, perspiring, and, above all, human – words not typically associated with a man clad in a tuxedo performing great works of the classical repertoire. However, it is nearly impossible to describe the extroverted music-making of Leonard Bernstein without using at least one of …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Eighty-five Years of Live Music and Counting

Posted by: Pat Padua

My colleague on the Library of Congress blog just waxed eloquent on the storied history of the Coolidge Auditorium.  I’ve seen some great shows on that hallowed stage; although I’ve gravitated to the jazz shows, like Cecil Taylor and  James Carter, The Mingus Big Band and John Zorn’s Masada, I’ve also spent memorable evenings there …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Happy Birthday Count Basie

Posted by: Pat Padua

Pianist, bandleader, composer, William “Count” Basie was born on this day in 1904. Some of the greatest names in jazz passed through his band, from tenor legend Lester Young to singers like Bille Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, and Joe Williams, just to name three. Basie’s career spanned fifty years and did not shy from whatever music happened …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Son of How I Spent My Summer Fellowship

Posted by: Pat Padua

The following is a guest post by Ryan Ebright, Graduate Musicology Student, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. As one of the three Pruett Fellows from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill working in the Music Division this summer (more information about our work for the Library can be found in a previous post …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Before the Flood

Posted by: Pat Padua

The Mid-Atlantic United States has been hit with a series of furious rainstorms this summer, and this gray day in Washington is no exception. We hope that instead of walking between raindrops and dodging cupcake-sized hail, you, gentle reader,  choose to stay inside, cuddle up by the Steinway and sing a few songs –  just …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Posted by: Pat Padua

This post is excerpted from an article written by James Wolf, Digital Conversion Specialist, Music Division. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (named after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge) was born in Croydon, England on August 15, 1875.  Coleridge-Taylor studied with Charles Villiers Stanford, and at the suggestion of Edward Elgar, was commissioned to write a piece for a …