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Category: Braille and Audio Reading Download BARD

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New BARD Additions – January 2019

Posted by: Gilbert Busch

This post is an overview of the braille music books added to BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) over the past month.

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American Composers and Musicians from A to Z: H (Part 2 – Hibbler, Albert George “Al”)

Posted by: Gilbert Busch

A brief glimpse at the life of Al Hibbler and some materials relating to him in the NLS Music Collection.

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New BARD Additions: September 2018

Posted by: Gilbert Busch

It’s the last week of September, and time to list some recent braille music acquisitions. You may call to request hard copies, or you may download them from the BARD site. Sorry, no recordings this week, but we hope there will be some very soon. Cello  Brahms, Johannes. Sonata No. 1, Op. 38 (BRM07814) Choral …

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New BARD Additions: July 2018

Posted by: Gilbert Busch

Read this blog and discover new materials, recorded and braille, now available from the NLS Music Section. Audio Materials All of the following are productions of Bill Brown. Banjo American Pie.  Teaches this Don McLean song without the use of music notation.  (DBM03915) Piano Bless the Broken Road. Teaches how to play “Bless the Broken …

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American Composers and Musicians from A to Z: E (Part 2 – Eyck, Jacob van)

Posted by: Gilbert Busch

This week we’ll break with our series a bit to discuss the life of a blind musician from outside of the United States. Had someone mentioned a composer named van Eyck to me when I was a child, I might have guessed that he was born before or during World War II. When I heard …

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Bernstein at 100

Posted by: Gilbert Busch

When I was in grade school, our chorus teacher let us hear a record called What Is Jazz (DBM00704), where tone color, blue notes, syncopation, and other aspects of jazz were described by a man named Leonard Bernstein (I assumed that he was a jazz piano player). By sixth grade I was listening to classical music …

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Going with “Ahmal” Once Again

Posted by: Gilbert Busch

“Oh, no—opera!” I thought as the recording of Amahl and the Night Visitors started. I was perhaps a fourth grader at the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children in Pittsburgh then, hearing this one-act opera for the first time. Although I could not always understand the words, I had to admit that the mother’s operatic …