41st ARSC Conference in Milwaukee

This year's "Association for Recorded Sound Collections" conference theme featured presentations dealing with the dawn of recorded sound and the transition from mechanical musical instruments (music boxes, player pianos and orchestrions) to devices meant to capture and/or reproduce sound (phonographs and magnetic recorders). To learn more about the ARSC Conference, click HERE

Andrew Hill: 1931-2007

Andrew Hill, a pianist and composer of highly original and sometimes opaquely inner-dwelling jazz whose work only recently found a wide audience, died Friday, April 20th, at his home in Jersey City. He was 75.

To read the New York Times obituary, click HERE

Ornette Coleman wins Pulitzer

Alto saxophonist and free jazz visionary Ornette Coleman won the Pulitzer Prize for music for his 2006 album, Sound Grammar. His is the first jazz album in history to win this coveted prize.

Read the complete article from Jazz Times HERE

Jazz, Giants and Journeys: The Photography of Herman Leonard

With a camera as his backstage pass, Herman Leonard has photographed the giants of jazz in their golden age, movie stars on set and on their travels to exotic places, the fashion world of Paris in the 1960s, and the inner sanctums of his beloved New Orleans. His friendships with the jazz greats allowed him to vividly capture the magical moments of the Harlem and Paris jazz clubs in the 1940s and 50s, ...
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Amazing Grace

The Library of Congress announces the launch of a new website devoted to the history of the hymn *Amazing Grace,* and the Library's Chasanoff/Elozua Amazing Grace Collection, which is comprised of 3,049 published recordings of the hymn by different individual musicians or musical ensembles. This a joint venture of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, the Music Division, and the American Folklife Center.

Since its creation in 1779 in England, *Amazing Grace* has grown in popularity to become one of the best-known musical works in the world. This Web site explores its history through items from the collections of the Library of Congress, from the earliest printing of the song to various performances of it on sound recordings.

The audio collection and database, compiled by Allan Chasanoff and Ramon Elozua, and given to the Library in 2004, is in the Guinness Book of World's Records as the largest collection of recordings of a single musical work. The website includes a number of selections from the collection, from gospel renditions by Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Mighty Clouds of Joy, an Elvis Presley recording, country versions by Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson to rock versions by the Byrds and the Lemonheads. A database for the entire collection can be searched on the site, and the complete audio collection is available for listening in the Library of Congress* Recorded Sound Reference Center.

To visit the website, click HERE

6th Annual Jazz Appreciation Month

What is Jazz Appreciation Month?
The concept is simple: designate one month for an annual public spotlight on jazz. Jazz Appreciation Month (or JAM) is intended to draw public attention to the glories of jazz as both an historical and a living treasure. The idea is to encourage musicians, concert halls, schools, colleges, museums, libraries, and public broadcasters to offer special programs on jazz every April.

Among other events and activities this year, the National Museum of American History is inaugurating a jazz discussion board. Come join the discussion!

To learn all about this, go to Smithsonian Jazz, a jazz portal for the Smithsonian Institute.

Pearls Before Breakfast

Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out.

HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L'ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday,...

Read the whole article from the Washington Post HERE

NewMusicBox

NewMusicBox is an innovative resource developed by the American Music Center that provides news, information and forums for the American composer and those interested in American music. NewMusicBox provides opportunities for editorials and discussions about current issues in music. The site provides an RSS feed. You will also find online concert web-casts. There is also a companion site to NewMusicBox, the NewMusicJukebox that enables composers to submit profiles, sound files and scores to the online community. Explore NewMusicBox and feel free to post your comments about it below.

Digital Mozart Edition

Last December, an exciting new resource was announced.

A digital version of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe (the critical edition of complete works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) is now available for personal study and for educational and classroom use compliments of the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum and the Packard Humanities Institute.

According to the International Stiftung Mozarteum, the Digital Mozart Edition:
“is a digital version of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe (NMA; New Mozart Edition), a scholarly edition of Mozart’s complete works that was compiled by musicologists from around the world in the last 50 years . . . It aims at facilitating the systematic research on Mozart for musicologists and performers as well as making Mozart’s scores available to non-specialists with a simple, user-friendly interface. The initiators have acquired all digital rights to the NMA from Bärenreiter-Verlag in Kassel, the publisher of the printed edition.”

Hoping to Move Guitar Notations Into the Legal Sunshine

IF budding guitarists fail to master "Stairway to Heaven" in the coming months, they can no longer blame the music publishers.

Because of an agreement in March between MusicNotes, an online music publisher and the Harry Fox Agency, which represents 31,000 music publishers, guitar tablature -- a popular system for teaching and learning guitar -- will enter the legitimate business realm for the first time.

Read the whole article from the New York Times HERE