 |
|
|
Alexander Street Press
Music Online News
May 2009
|
| |
 |
|
|
May 2009
|
First Annual Online Jazz Music Festival Winners Announced
We had lots of terrific feedback from Alexander Street’s First Annual Online Jazz Music Festival, which took place May 12-14. (If you missed it, don’t worry, there’s always next year.)
There were hundreds of entries in our playlist contest—if you have an online subscription to Jazz Music Library, you’ll want to take a look!
It was so difficult to choose a winner that we wound up choosing two! Each earned a free, one-year subscription for their library to the new Jazz Music Library.
Congratulations to our winners and their libraries, and our thanks to everyone who participated and made our fazz festival such a success.
|
|
Featured Playlist of the Month
One of the best-loved features of Music Online is the ability to create and share playlists. Every month, we feature a different playlist and interview its author with an eye toward sharing library promotion tips and teaching aids that you can replicate in your library. If you have a playlist you’d like us to consider featuring, please email us at music@alexanderstreet.com.
The author of this month’s featured playlist is Phillippa McKeown-Green, librarian at Auckland University, a long-time jazz lover—and performer—and one of the two winners in our playlist contest held this month in conjunction with our Online Jazz Festival. Her playlist, Avant Garde and Beyond, was, she says, her way of exploring the collection’s breadth. “There were lots of older, classic recordings, but I was looking to see what newer or less usual material there was.”
She found what she was looking for. Phillippa’s playlist features works by Ornette Coleman, Henry Threadgill, The Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble, Eric Dophy, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach.
Phillippa’s passion for jazz began when she met the man who is now her husband, a jazz lover, in an electronic music course. “When we were first married and very poor, we discovered the Hamilton Public Library had jazz records you could borrow for a small fee. We would go and borrow four LPs every Friday night and listen to them all week.”
Asked how she expected Jazz Music Library would be used at Auckland University, Phillippa said, “We have a relatively new jazz program—mostly performance students, and they are on a different part of the campus from the library. I can't entice them into the library very often. . . . I would love them to listen more, and we are building up our collections, but the students have to come and use those in the library. So I'm hoping they will find the online access really helpful and even enlightening. What will they make of Ornette?”
Phillippa pointed out that Jazz Music Library will be a valuable resource for non-jazz students and faculty as well. “[Those] who write mostly chamber and electronic works could really benefit from listening to cutting-edge music from other genres, particularly music that challenges tonality in the way that they are used to, but comes out of a different rhythmic and timbral tradition.”
Playlist Tips and Tools
Our new Playlist User Guide can help you create and make use of playlists as Phillippa McKeown-Green has done at Auckland University.
|
|
We’ve identified some errors in the first batch of MARC records for Classical Music Library, and we are busy correcting the problem! We expect to have a replacement set soon—our apologies for any inconvenience this has caused. As soon as the records are up, we'll post an alert on the Music Online blog, in our regular monthly Product Updates Bulletin, and on the MARC Records page. Stay tuned!
|
|
Content and Functionality News
New Content
We’re continuously adding new content to Music Online collections. To see a complete listing of all new content added in the past month, visit the Music Online cross-search interface and click on the “What’s New” tab at http://muco.alexanderstreet.com/WhatsNew. Or consult the “What’s New” tab on any one of our individual music and performing arts collections.
Here's what's new in May:
- Classical Music Reference Library now includes 26,858 essays and images from 26 sources for a total of 17,147 pages. In May, we added three new reference titles totaling 966 pages:
- Contemporary World Music was updated with 448 albums—a total of 6,447 tracks, taking the total count to 1,530 albums and 20,682 tracks. Record labels added include ARC Music, Blue Flame Records, Intersound, Karuna, Triloka, Rounder Records, Sheridan Square Records, and Six Degrees Records. There’s a little of everything in this round of content uploads—from Afrobeat, electronic lounge music, rembetika, and belly dance, to reggae and dub. Some of the new albums added include: 80 Years: London Jewish Male Choir; Bobi Céspedes: Rezos; Cinematic: Classic Film Music Remixed; Cutting Razor–Rare Cuts From The Black Ark; Emad Sayyah: Ma Ajmal Beirut–Modern Bellydance from Lebanon; and Hugh Masekela: Hope.
- A total of 278 new scores and 16,164 pages were added to Classical Scores Library this month, taking the total to 12,644 scores and 229,586 pages. The new scores come to us thanks to Edition Peters and University Music Editions. New opera scores and libretti come from the collection French Opera in the 17th and 18th Centuries, housed at the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation. New scores include works by: Delius, Destouches, Devienne, Dove, Le Sueur, Lully, Maw, Mehul, Piccinni, Rameau, Rathbone, Reich, Salieri, Satie, and many others.
Content Coming Soon
We’ve just licensed content from the following record labels and music publishers:
- Opus Arte (for Opera in Video): We have more than 200 hours of video, including the complete operas of Monteverdi & Wagner; five Rameau and twelve Verdi operas; plus gems such as John Adams's Doctor Atomic, Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, and Messiaen's St. Francois d'Assisse. Venues include the Royal Opera House, Teatro Real, Glyndebourne, and the Paris Opera.
- New recordings from Folk Era Records (for American Song) include The Kingston Trio, Glenn Yarbrough, The Highwaymen, and Paul Robeson.
New Features Coming Soon
In June, Classical Scores Library will sport a new, faster-loading image viewer that will make it easier to access long scores, regardless of bandwidth. The new image viewer will let you choose between the new, quick-loading, lower resolution jpg file and the traditional higher resolution PDF file for every score in the collection.
Other enhancements include thumbnail images that let you see and scroll through multiple pages without having to open the score. Enhanced printing options let you print an entire score, just a movement, or a range of pages you select.
These new features will also appear within the new Music Online cross-search interface. We'll alert you as soon as these new features are live.
|
|
Recent Reviews, Promotion Tools, Free Downloads, and More
Reviews and Mentions
Thanks to Library Journal bloggers Cheryl LaGuardia, of LJ's E-Views blog, and Matthew Moyer, of LJ's Music for the Masses blog, for their posts about our Jazz Festival. (And do note that the E-Views blog gives a username and password for Jazz Music Library that is good for a few more days yet!)
We saw lots of other great blog mentions and Tweets—here are a few of our favorites, just for fun:
- "Dude—this is stupid-cool!"
- "An awesome deal!"
- "Yow! This looks really cool."
- "Grooving to some Willie Bobo thanks to the online Jazz Festival."
- "I'm loading up on Jimmy Smith now, Kenny Burrell is next. Might have to call in sick tomorrow."
Free Music Download from Classical Music Library
This week’s selection is Samuel Barber's Nuvoletta, Op. 25, which is notable for its incorporation of text from “The Mookse and the Gripes” section of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Barber composed the work in 1947. This recording is performed by Ann Murray (mezzo-soprano), and Graham Johnson (piano). Download this work now.
To keep up with all Alexander Street free music downloads, visit us here and subscribe to the Music Online blog RSS feed.
Liz Dutton, Music Editor
Alexander Street Press
music@alexanderstreet.com
http://alexanderstreet.com/products/muso.htm
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
© Copyright 2009 Alexander Street Press. All rights reserved.
Last Updated:
29-Sep-2009 |
|
