One of the highlights for the Music Division this year was the recipient of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Music. But even the lucky few of us who attended the Gershwin Prize concert at the Coolidge Auditorium got only a glimpse of the all-star line-up who would perform at the White House. Wednesday night on […]
Composer Roger Reynolds was born July 18, 1934 in Detroit, Michigan. Ciro G. Scotto, in his 1992 volume Contemporary Composers, wrote that Reynolds “has created a body of work that encompasses nearly every major musical development in the 20th century.” In an article written for the Library of Congress Information Bulletin in 2002, Senior Music Specialist […]
Followers of In the Muse will be pleased to know that a number of Music Division events covered in these virtual pages are now available on the Library of Congress’s Webcasts page. A Conversation with Dafnis Prieto and Larry Appelbaum A performance by the Dafnis Prieto Si O Si Quartet. Music and the Brain: Stage […]
The Library of Congress Chorale, which draws staff members from all over the library, recently celebrated the birthdays of sundry composers with a lunchtime concert in the Coolidge Auditorium. This was the last concert for their conductor John Saint Amour, who has admirably served his two-year term and awaits a capable successor to arise from […]
June 4th was the birthday of Cuban-born composer and reed player Paquito D’Rivera. His clarinet and saxophone work has graced a diverse range of ensembles, from the incendiary Cuban-jazz group Irakere to the National Symphony Orchestra. A performance of “Merengue” by cellist Yo-Yo Ma won D’Rivera a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental in 2004. Other […]
Last December I began this blog with the announcement that Sir Paul McCartney would be the recipient of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Music. I chatted with four Library of Congress staff members who experienced Beatlemania in person. From the stands at the Beatles’ rehearsal for the Ed Sullivan show, to the screams that could be […]
Tomorrow evening, the Montreal group Ensemble Caprice will bring Bach and the Bohemian Gypsies to the Coolidge Auditorium, in a featured concert at the 39th Annual Meeting of the American Musical Instrument Society. This program will illustrate the influence of anonymous gypsy virtuosi on the works of two great Baroque composers. The Caprice musicians and […]
Modern music lovers with a penchant for the Baroque may assume that the much-loved timbre of the harpsichord has been popular ever since its development in the 15th century. But according to Grove Music Online, the instrument fell almost entirely out of favor by the early 19th century, owing to the emergence of the piano. […]
Pianist-composer Uri Caine has played with a veritable who’s-who of jazz, from hard bop legend Hank Mobley to soul-jazz leader Grover Washington to avant-garde icon John Zorn, from scat singer Annie Ross to the man who has been described as “James Brown trapped in Don Knotts’ body,” Arto Lindsay. He has performed Duke Ellington numbers […]
“People talk about song-writing techniques. I have a technique. I sit around scratching myself and waiting for something to crop up. That’s why they call it a gift! Sit there and open up your mind and let yourself be a conduit.” That’s song-writer and raconteur Bill Withers, who so memorably closed a great evening of […]