Posts from the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound

The Sinatra: An American Icon exhibition has many wonderful media stations for visitors—songs, excerpts from television specials, films trailers and featurettes, and a juke box. But the one that is garnering the most attention is “The House I Live In,” the RKO short subject that won Sinatra his first Oscar.

LPA is hosting public programs about listening to Sinatra on the radio, as thousands of Americans would do every week.

The Boro-Linc project is bringing performances and projects from the Lincoln Center campus to the other boroughs.

We love Halloween and want to celebrate it by sharing some great Halloween themed recordings we have in our holdings.

I love collaborative exhibitions because I learn so much about our partners. Working with Susie Tofte, the archivist of the Sesame Workshop and curator of the exhibition, I learned about the Workshop’s outreach programs for families dealing with the challenges of military service and incarceration. Now that the exhibition is available for viewing, I see that section’s impact on visitors who expected only fun, children’s content.

At "Somebody Come and Play" you can see Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, the Count, Snuffy, and Oscar up close. And, by my special request, Hoots.

Guest post by Elin Øyen Vister.

The Beatles were not only wonderful songwriters and singers, but they were experts at peppering their press conferences with wit—and avoiding real answers to meaningful questions.

There is something very unique about a listening program. It is not always typical to sit and listen without explanation or visual stimulation. On the evening of February 6th, about 50 people gathered in Bruno Walter Auditorium for New York's first Kinokophonography Night here at LPA, where we asked the audience to do just that: sit and listen.

Recorded July 1, 1963 in London, UK.

Upon taking physical possession of the piece, my mind was set on two objectives. The first was to prove to myself that the drum head really was what it appeared to be. And number two, proving to the collecting world in general that this was, in fact, the Sullivan show drum head.

Below is a guest post by Coryn Smethurst, a composer, film maker, philosopher, sound recordist, and longtime friend of the Kinokophone Collective. Mr. Smethurst is also the Co-founder and Administrator of the Sonic Arts Forum. In this post he shares an experience that changed the way he listens to the world.

William F. Ludwig himself put it best when he said, “On February 9th, 1964, a new musical event burst from the TV screens across America. The Beatles had arrived, featuring Ringo Starr and his Ludwig Black Oyster drums. Literally overnight everyone wanted a drum set like Ringo’s. The drum boom was born!”

Are you curious about The Library for the Performing Arts upcoming Kinokophonography Night, February 6, 6:30 p.m.? Below is a guest post by renowned sound artist Jez Riley French. Mr. French has submitted a work of recorded sound that is featured on our Kinokophonography Night program. He writes about his motivation, his work, and his process.

It was March of this year when I first heard from Amanda Belantera, who had begun her initial search for a New York City home for Kinokophonography Night. Amanda, along with the Kinokophone Collective, has produced Kinokophonography events throughout the UK and in Japan. Kinokophone organized the event as a place for recordists, phonographers, and listeners to gather and share in a night of sounds from all over the world. (Some favorites of the past have included a snail eating a peach, and the juxtaposition of underground 

This post answers a question about the image that the Library’s web page has been using when it highlights the Vandamm exhibition, Pioneering Poet of Light. I was thrilled when the web editors selected it, since it illustrates the title so well. So, here’s an extended caption, with musical accompaniment.

Three’s a Crowd was a revue, presented in the 1930-1931 season. Like The Band Wagon in last week's post, it was choreographed by the brilliantly innovative Albertina Rasch and paired a young Broadway/vaudeville veteran with a European ballet 

The line formed early outside of Edna Barnes Salomon Reading Room as this particular event in the Live from the NYPL series was the hottest ticket in town on a cold fall night. Who would have thought that a round table discussion regarding the collapse of quirky record 

Perhaps the most widely published and least understood visual record of 20th century performing arts, the output of the Vandamm Studio has largely been utilized only as illustrative backdrop for the retelling of Broadway history. The prints, contact sheets, and negatives of theater, music and dance in London (1908–1923) and New York (1924–1963) are among the Library for the Performing Arts's most requested treasures.

Few are aware that the visionary photographer and portraitist who lent her talent and name to the studio was a woman and one who opened her 

OOOOOOOOOO! KLAHOMA!

As a native Oklahoman and former "Sylvie" in my high school's production of Oklahoma!, there is no sweeter sound than the joyous shouts and celestial harmonies of the massive hit 8-part chorus number during the second act of Rodgers and Hammerstein's first smash musical. As a confirmed choir nerd, arranger Robert Russell Bennett is the star of my heart. Here's why...

How the number came to be

Less than three weeks before the show's Broadway debut, the musical was still called Away We Go! This was a Colonial Theatre program