The following is a guest post from Music Archivist Chris Hartten. Peggy Clark (1915-1996) lit up the Broadway stage in ways very different from most stars of 20th-century America. Following her 1938 Broadway debut as a costume designer for The Girl from Wyoming, Clark soon established herself as a pioneer of stage lighting and one …
Caped crusaders are not the only ones who don masks as a career choice. A recent show and tell in the Music Division curated by the Music Division’s Elizabeth Aldrich, with Dance Heritage Fellows Nicole Topich and Kirsten Wilkinson, showcased items from special collections in dance. This mask was used by Armgard von Bardeleben (1940-2012) in …
“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 …