Posts from the Music Division

If you like the Beatles, Johnny Cash, The Ramones and other notable bands and musical artists, we have comic recommendations for you!

Now available for research at the Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound at NYPL: a book on orchestration and orchestral instruments belonging to Thomas A. Edison.

Even if you can't make it to the Library for the Performing Arts to see the The Lou Reed Book Collection, you can "read like Lou Reed" with selections that include a William Burroughs novel and a look at the influential Velvet Underground.

When a budding opera singer becomes a Library archivist, exciting discoveries await in one particular personal collection from the Library for the Performing Arts.

Join us for concerts and installations that reflect the NYC accordion scene (yes, of course there's one!) and the role of the accordion in performance traditions across the globe.

Blanche Merrill was the writer and creator of humorous songs for Fanny Brice and other vaudeville-era stars. But the archives reveal a powerful, somber work from this lyricist.

While compiling a photograph collection for the Library, a volunteer discovers the archives from one of the first-ever jazz festivals. Here's his story and some of the photos.

Get a look at Aretha Franklin's ASCAP membership form, on which she reveals some of her background and tastes. It's also available in person at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Professor Ryan Ebright, an NYPL Short Term Fellow for 2017-2018, visited the Library for the Performing Arts to study the Meredith Monk Archive.

Newly available at the NYPL Music Division: The Otto Hess Photographs, a collection that includes images rare images of the record manufacturing process, as shown at the Varsity Records factory.

Guest post by New York Public Library Short-Term Fellow Chantal Frankenbach, California State University, Sacramento

The American modern dancer Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) was one of the most acclaimed and influential artists of her time. Notorious for her romantic involvements with the likes of British theater critic Gordon Craig, German biologist Ernst Haeckel, and millionaire Paris Singer, Duncan also attracted artists and intellectuals as collaborators in her work as a dancer. These collaborations have a great deal to tell us of her wide-ranging ideas about the 

Featuring the research and analysis of Emma Winter Zeig, volunteer and former intern, on one of the songs discovered for "Laughter, Agita and Rage": Political Cabaret in Isaiah Sheffer's New York.

In celebration of its anniversary, a current case exhibit on the third floor of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts highlights materials related to 9 Evenings.

The Music Division has a rich collection of songsters from 1840 through 1888, particularly from the Republican and Whig parties.

A look at the White Studio photograph from the 1932 edition of the revue Americana.

The National Museum of African American History & Culture opens on September 24, 2016. The Smithsonian has decided to name the celebration “Lift Every Voice,” borrowing the phrase from the song known as America’s Black National Anthem.

The Library for the Performing Arts’s exhibition on political cabaret focuses on the three series associated with Isaiah Sheffer, whose Papers are in the Billy Rose Theatre Division.

Anahid Ajemian and George Avakian put on an ambitious and eclectic concert series that blended the music and musicians of different worlds.

With the release of the latest film starring Meryl Streep, many people are discovering Florence Foster Jenkins. Long known to many of those involved with music, Jenkins is generally viewed as a society lady who was unable to realize the defective quality of her attempts at singing. Although her biography as outlined in the film is generally correct, I feel there is more to see in this woman than just a deluded society lady.