Thursday, April 18^th, 2024

3:00 – 4:30 p.m.

420 Capen Hall, Special Collections

There’s no bad blood, we’ll be highlighting other pop star poetry and sheet music too. And in our wildest dreams, you’ll make some friendship bracelets with us. The real love story is that there will also be cookies and lemonade. From Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, celebrate the literary canon of Taylor Swift with the UB Libraries.

Register at https://booking.lib.buffalo.edu/event/12312441  Drop-ins are welcome too!

*Please note that Special Collections, 420 Capen Hall, is in the same building as Silverman Library.

]]> https://library.buffalo.edu/news/2023/08/04/reimagining-lockwood-5/ Fri, 04 Aug 2023 16:45:32 +0000 https://library.buffalo.edu/news/?p=4522 Change is on the horizon for the fifth floor of Lockwood Library. As part of the UB Libraries’ strategic mission to enhance spaces in response to the university community’s needs, an exciting transformation is underway: the Music Library will soon find its new home within a specially designed section of Lockwood Library.

Lockwood Library, boasting the largest square footage among UB’s libraries, is set to accommodate not just the Music Collection itself, but also offer ample space for reader facilities and soundproof study rooms tailored for sight reading and attentive listening. In preparation for the upcoming relocation of the Music Library, a dedicated section within Lockwood Library had to be meticulously cleared.

To ensure a relevant collection and optimize available space, the staff of UB Library undertook a comprehensive process of evaluating, organizing, and redistributing existing materials. Items that were previously situated on the northern side of Lockwood 5 have been successfully moved to alternate sections of the library as well as the Libraries Annex.

With this phase now wrapping up, construction of the distinct and branded new Music Library space is anticipated to commence shortly. The subsequent stages of the project will seamlessly follow, marking another significant step in UB Libraries’ commitment to enhancing the learning environment for the university community.

The project will reformat 173 reel-to-reel tapes containing circa 627 musical works presented on recitals by the University at Buffalo’s Creative Associates, 1964-1980. The Associates were members of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, established by Lukas Foss and Allen Sapp in 1964. These recitals were the concerts the Associates programmed themselves as supplements to the Center-scheduled concerts. As such they represent the musical interests of the Associates ranging from early music to contemporaneous music. Many performances of contemporary works were either performed by their respective composers or under their direction. Close to 20 premieres are included. The roster of performers and composers is exceptional. It represents a high number of luminaries of contemporary music of the period, including Crumb, Berio, Wuorinen, Carter, Copland, Bussotti, Scelsi, Feldman, Cage, as well as lesser-known figures whose representation here may be even rarer.

View a list of the other fifteen projects funded for the second call of the Recordings at Risk program.

The exhibit contains writings about the multi-talented Julius Eastman (1940-1990) by three musicians who worked with him in Buffalo and New York City: Jan Williams, Joseph Kubera, and Bobby Previte. It also includes text by Eastman scholar Jeff Weston about the challenges presented by the notational practices of Eastman in his scores and text by John Smigielski about the three works presented on a famous concert at Northwestern University in 1980. The exhibit also features rarely-seen photographs of Julius Eastman by former Buffalo resident Chris Rusiniak.

Eastman’s music remained in relative obscurity until recently. Renée Levine-Packer and Mary Jane Leach co-edited a collection of writings about Eastman titled Gay guerrilla : Julius Eastman and his music in 2015 and the level of attention to Eastman’s life and career has greatly increased since then. While the Music Library does not hold a single Julius Eastman collection, it does hold extensive documentation about Eastman’s career here in Buffalo and at UB, both as a Creative Associate and as a faculty member.

The exhibit complements the Burchfield-Penney Art Center’s night of Julius Eastman events  Friday, Feb. 10^th.   The program of events is listed online at:

https://www.burchfieldpenney.org/events/event:02-10-2017-8-00pm-the-music-of-julius-eastman-featuring-percussionist-amy-knoles/ ,

The concerto was composed in 1806 for violinist Franz Clement. Although it was not initially a critical success, it is now considered one of the masterworks among violin concerti. The work’s famous opening of four solo strokes on the timpani (joined by the woodwinds on the fifth stroke) are clear on the first page of the score.

Thanks to Mrs. Gearhart’s generosity the Music Library is able to acquire items such as this facsimile that add considerable richness to the collection.

Of the many memorable moments in the lecture, the following poignant quote demonstrates how deeply the performance troubled Cage.

“What disturbs me so deeply is that our . . . that the history of our civilization is the history, isn’t it, not of the wars, as they tell us it is. . . but it’s the history of our . . . well, a history that includes Thoreau for instance. . . . Why can’t we learn? Why do we continually, when something is possibly beautiful, why do we find every way in our hands to trample on it? Why, when something could open our eyes, why do we close our eyes and pay no attention? I suppose we have to do it over again. It’s difficult to understand and perhaps there is no hope for us.”

Eastman was perhaps best known for his vivid performances of Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King. His performance with the Fires of London under the direction of the composer has remained in print since its release in 1971. However, there were no commercial recordings available of Eastman’s own compositions until Paul Tai and Mary Jane Leach produced the 3-CD compilation Unjust Malaise for New World Records in 2005 (including two archival recordings from the University at Buffalo Music Library).

The new book provides the most exhaustive examination to date of the many facets of Eastman’s life and career. Congratulations to Mary Jane and Renée on their collaborative effort to keep the legacy of Julius Eastman alive for a new generation of listeners, performers, and researchers.

The Music Library is pleased to host an exhibit written and curated by Ethan Hayden, Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition. Ethan’s exhibit celebrates this year’s festival as the 30th anniversary operating under the direction of Dr. David Felder. Ethan has written a series of blog post articles about the members of this year’s composition faculty and also interviewed David Felder for this year’s festival. The exhibit draws on some of those articles (available in the Blog archive at http://edgeofthecenter.blogspot.com/2015/05/david-felder-interview.html).

The current exhibition in the Music Library provides the historical background of the founding of the Center by Lukas Foss and Allen Sapp. The exhibition contains documents, clippings, concert programs, and photographs pertaining to the creation of the Center and its first class of Creative Associates.

An online summary of the exhibit contains the full text of the Rockefeller Foundation proposal written by Lukas Foss and Allen Sapp for the creation of the Center.