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 …
The Music Division has been busy this week. The Performing Arts Encyclopedia has just presented online collections both new (Franz Liszt, in honor of his bicentennial) and updated (fifteen composers and their works have been added to the American Choral Music presentation). But today we have a special announcement to make. The recipient of the 2012 …
September 19th was the birthday of two old friends of the Music Division. Jazz pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams was born September 19, 1930 in Chicago. He worked as a sideman behind such luminaries as Dexter Gordon and Max Roach, and was part of the 1970s jazz loft scene in New York, so named because of …
This week’s Pic of the Week breaks one of the cardinal rules of Good Photography: show your subject. But if you recognize the face emerging from the ghostly apparition, it makes perfect sense. Jazz singer Mel Tormé was born on this day in 1925. He began his long career as a drummer for Chico Marx, …
The following is a guest post from Senior Music Reference Specialist Kevin LaVine. Throughout the 1930s, as the developing Soviet state was liquidating Tsarist property in order to generate funding for its ambitious projects, Herbert Putnam, the Librarian of Congress at that time, seized the opportunity to purchase approximately 2800 volumes which were formerly held …
As August draws to a close, In the Muse would like to catch up on a number of birthdays you may have missed. August 4, which is the day we celebrated Louis Armstrong’s birthday, was also the birthday of film composer David Raksin, who donated sketches and scores from films like Laura, Forever Amber, and Carrie …