While perusing The Wall Street Journal earlier this month, Musical Instrument Curator Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford happened upon a review of Canadian photographer Todd McLellan’s new book Things Come Apart and she stopped in her tracks. There she saw a photograph of a bicycle’s parts laid out neatly, grouped with like pieces (an example from his …
The following is a guest post by Senior Music Specialist Susan Clermont. Anniversaries commemorating the significant birthdays or deaths of famous composers often provide the curatorial staff here at the Library of Congress with great opportunities to take stock, so to speak, of what riches related to a certain figure might be found among our …
On Tuesday night the Library of Congress hosted the annual ASCAP “We Write the Songs” concert that celebrates the Library’s partnership with The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, a non-profit organization that handles licensing and royalties for songwriters. In 2010 the first “We Write the Songs” concert was produced as a celebration …
The following is a guest post from Head of Reader Services Daniel Boomhower. In the fall of 2012 Dr. Chris Ford, Director of the Baltimore School for the Arts, contacted the Music Division to see if his faculty and students could work with us to develop a research component in conjunction with their production of …
This Friday, April 5, the Library of Congress is excited to host singer-songwriter/composer/musician Gabriel Kahane with pianist-composer Timothy Andres as the two artists present an evening of piano-vocal music that features their own original music alongside that of Bach, Schumann, Britten, Ives, and others. Kahane made an impression in 2006 with his well-known song cycle …
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, …
The following is a guest post co-authored by Music Archivist Chris Hartten and Senior Music Specialist Mark Horowitz. There is a history of women’s singing groups being representative of their eras: the Boswell Sisters in the ‘30s, Dianna Ross and the Supremes in the ‘60s, Destiny’s Child in the ‘90s. But no group seemed to …
The following is a reprint of a blog post originally published on April 16, 2012. As of today, Sr. Gregory’s correspondence from the Oscar Hammerstein II Collection is now available online via the Library of Congress Performing Arts Encyclopedia. See the added inventory and links to digitized material at the end of the blog post. …
Washington, DC had a big weekend with preparations for yesterday’s Presidential Inauguration (we were getting ready for it last week with our Inauguration Day sheet music blog post). Nearly one million people were estimated to attend yesterday’s festivities on the National Mall, and the masses were treated to several stunning patriotic musical performances, from James …