Head of Acquisitions and Processing Denise Gallo recently pointed out the ingenuity of her staff’s Christmas tree, festively adorned with photocopied highlights from the Music Division’s deep coffers. The elves who assembled this holiday centerpiece were the music specialists and technicians who work in the archival processing section. Gallo notes that the tree is also constructed …
The following is a guest post by Acquisitions Specialist and Curator of the Gerry Mulligan Papers, Loras John Schissel. We were fortunate to have Bob Brookmeyer and members of Gerry Mulligan’s band when the Music Division celebrated the acquisition of the Mulligan Papers with a gala concert in the Coolidge Auditorium in 1999. I’ve met …
In the Muse has been under the weather lately, and would have otherwise paid timely homage to one of the twentieth century’s greatest entertainers. Francis Albert Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey on December 12, 1915. His long and storied career invited imitation …
The following is a guest post from Music Archivist Chris Hartten. Laurence Picken (featured at right as our Pic of the Week!) first made his mark in academia as a scientist, but here in the Music Division we remember Picken as an eminent musicologist who spent nearly sixty years studying the musical traditions of East …
Aaron Copland was born 111 years ago yesterday “on a street in Brooklyn that can only be described as drab,” as he wrote in the first sentence of his autobiographical sketch, Composer from Brooklyn (published in the Winter, 1968 issue of ASCAP Today – I’m reading a copy directly from the Copland Collection here in …
The third annual Washington Tweed Ride (the autumnal iteration of the Seersucker Social, which we mentioned in the late spring) is upon us again, in which local hipsterati don their finest and pedal vintage bicycles around our increasingly bike-friendly town. In honor of the dapper velocipedists primed to pedal among the hills of our great …
The following was written in part by Senior Cataloging Specialist Sharon McKinley. Oh boy, it’s Hallowe’en! My Lady Gaga costume wowed ‘em when I came in to work this morning, and my candy corn lights are glowing brightly. The frost is on the pumpkin and the sweet tooth is ready to go. What more do …
The following is a guest post from Music Division Contract Archivist Janet McKinney. Can you imagine us years from today, Sharing a park bench quietly? How terribly strange to be seventy… Old friends Seventy years ago today on October 13, 1941, Paul Simon was born. Three weeks later, Arthur Garfunkel was born on November 5th. …
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s new documentary, “Prohibition,” aired this week on PBS and I’m sure that many of you have seen it already (if you haven’t caught it on TV yet, you can watch it online here!). In the film, Burns and Novick explore the rise and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to …