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Category: Commissions

Acquisition Highlights for the Past Year – a Top Five List!

Posted by: Cait Miller

This is a guest post from Head of Acquisitions & Processing Vin Novara, with Senior Music Specialists Mark Eden Horowitz, Kate Rivers, and Ray White.   Nick Hornby’s book “High Fidelity” (1995) features an entertaining look at the quirks of people who intensely collect on music. Top five lists feature prominently throughout the work. As …

Engraving depicting a scene from Verdi's opera adaptation of Macbeth

Shakespeare Everywhere: From the Stacks to the Coolidge Stage

Posted by: Nicholas A. Brown-Cáceres

This autumn, many of Washington, D.C.’s arts and culture venues are collaborating to present the Shakespeare Everywhere Festival. The Library of Congress is pleased to participate in this gathering of theatrical productions, concerts, lectures, and educational events on offer through December 31, 2023. Bibliophiles and music lovers can experience two special events as part of …

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

Virtual Artist-in-Residence, Violinist Jennifer Koh

Posted by: Claudia Morales

The following is a guest post by virtual artist-in-residence, violinist Jennifer Koh. I am honored to be a virtual artist-in-residence at the Library of Congress. For the program that was streamed on November 19, 2020, I included works that engage with the question of who we are during this time of COVID. Beethoven Sonata No. …

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

Igor Santos’confined. speak. –McKim Commission, world premiere

Posted by: Claudia Morales

The following is a guest post by composer Igor Santos. confined. speak. is a 15-minute work for violin and piano commissioned by the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress. It was written for Ensemble Dal Niente members MingHuan Xu and Winston Choi and was recorded in Chicago on October 27, 2020, for a virtual …

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

Announcing the 2020-2021 Season of Concerts from the Library of Congress

Posted by: David Plylar

The 2020-2021 season of Concerts from the Library of Congress will be all-virtual, in an unprecedented move to safely offer music and lectures to the public. The times require creative approaches from artists and presenters to responsibly offer programs, and we are doing what we can to provide remote access to the music and resources …

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

Concerts from the Library of Congress presents The Boccaccio Project

Posted by: David Plylar

My experience reading works like Cervantes’ Don Quixote or Boccaccio’s Decameron always leaves me with a sense of déjà vu. How is it that people who lived so many centuries ago can still sound so modern, so relevant? While there is a “liter-heiry” influence of these writers to be felt in recent works, it also …