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Archive: 2010 (153 Posts)

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Happy New Year

Posted by: Pat Padua

The Music Division wishes you a happy New Year’s Eve.  If you find your midnight kiss watched over by the winking satellite pictured in “Under the Midnight Moon,” from the Historic Sheet Music Collection, 1800-1922 in the Performing Arts Encylcopedia –  please, call a cab. Celebrate New Year’s Day with the Bernsteins with this holiday greeting …

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

Jingle Bells

Posted by: Pat Padua

The first time I read Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 poem “The Bells,” I thought it was unusually upbeat for a work by the master of the macabre. But upon further reading, those clamorous consonants, that constant clanging, the “time, time, time,” and “tinkle, tinkle, tinkle” are entirely in line with the likes of “The Telltale …

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

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

Posted by: Pat Padua

The following is a guest post by Senior Music Specialist Mark Horowitz. As it’s the holiday season, it seems appropriate to express thanks for a series of extraordinary opportunities that the Music Division has afforded me…and to celebrate some of the other good things they lead to. It mostly started in 1996 with a grant …

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MacDowell Reconsidered

Posted by: Pat Padua

The following is a guest post by Senior Music Specialist Robin Rausch. The weekend of December 3-5, I participated in a MacDowell Festival & Symposium at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, to commemorate the 150th birthday (on December 18th) of the distinguished American composer Edward MacDowell.   MacDowell is generally acknowledged to be the first American …

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

Happy Birthday to Us!

Posted by: Pat Padua

One year ago today, In the Muse launched with Meet the Music Division, a post that interviewed several staff members about their personal experience with Beatlemania.  Since then, we’ve brought you news of Music Division events, including our world-renowned concert programs. We’ve highlighted a wide variety of treasures from the collection – from old maestros like Bach …

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

Want to hear Radiohead played on a Stradivarius?

Posted by: Pat Padua

The Sybarite5 will bring their eclectic repertoire, which features works by Dvořák,  Mozart, Astor Piazolla and Radiohead, to the Coolidge Auditorium Saturday night, December 18th. The group will be performing on Stradivarius instruments from the Music Division’s priceless collection. Advanced tickets are no longer available, but patrons are encouraged to try for stand-by tickets starting at …

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

From Page to Stage with the Music Division

Posted by: Pat Padua

The following is a guest post by James Wintle, Reference Specialist, and Mark Horowitz, Senior Music Specialist. This winter, one of the hottest tickets in Washington DC is the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s revival of Leonard Bernstein’s operetta Candide, in a new production written and directed by Mary Zimmerman. Fans of the show, who want to …

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

Gottlieb on Kodachrome

Posted by: Pat Padua

Next Friday the Music Division will release another batch of images from the William P. Gottlieb Collection to Flickr Commons. What makes this particular selection of images special, and a little more poignant, at least for me,  can be found outside the image. If you look closely at the edges of the color images in …

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

Country Music: It’s Good for What Ails You

Posted by: Pat Padua

Saturday night the Music Division hosted a hand-clapping, foot-stomping evening with the Country Music Association‘s Songwriters Series.  The assembled songwriters lined up on the Coolidge stage with just their voices and acoustic guitars, and although the Coolidge is not exactly a small venue, the spare instrumentation helped bring out a musical intimacy seldom found in …