Music changed life of Seattle's new arts director

"If not for the trombone, Seattle's new arts czar says, he might not have gone to college."

For the full story, please see the Seattle Times.

Historian Explains The Origin Of "Taps"

"The languid, melancholy sound of a bugle call is a fixture at military funerals. But it wasn't always that way. The song taps used to signal 'lights out' for soldiers to go to sleep. Taps historian Jari Villanueva, a former ceremonial bugler at Arlington National Cemetery, discusses the evolution of the song and the meaning of Memorial Day."

For the full story, please see NPR.org.

Academic Minute: Passive Hearing, Active Listening

"In today’s Academic Minute, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Pauline Oliveros examines the difference between passive hearing and active listening. Find out more about the Academic Minute here."

Musicians demand Grammy’s reverse category cuts

"A coalition of musicians is demanding the Recording Academy restore more than 30 categories cut from the Grammy Awards, alleging the reductions unfairly target ethnic music and were done without the input of its thousands of members."

For the full story, please see Star.com.

Will EMI's move to reclaim digital licensing rights simplify the process?

"Earlier this month, EMI Music Publishing announced that it will take back digital licensing rights from ASCAP, the body that collects performance royalties for artists in North America."

For the full story, please see The Guardian.

Sing for Your Life

"Ryan Speedo Green stands almost six-foot-five and weighs 300 pounds and wears size 17 shoes, and on a Sunday afternoon in March he was running in place and doing jumping jacks as he waited in the wings of the Metropolitan Opera for his turn to sing. It was the semifinals of the most important operatic voice competition in America, and Ryan was seized by such anxiety that he felt his massive body vanishing. Seventeen of the 22 singers left in the contest had gone before him; to his ears their performances were spectacular. He was fighting off the feeling that he didn’t belong here. Ryan, who is African-American, grew up in low-income housing and a trailer park in southeastern Virginia. When he was 12, he spent time in juvenile detention for threatening his brother and mother. During high school he moved to a street of shacklike homes, with a drug dealer’s headquarters across from his family’s front door and with bullet holes from stray gunfire just above his mother’s bedroom window."

For the full story, please see New York Times.

How Piano Wires Changed Through Centuries

"When Wolfgang Mozart sat down to perform his masterpieces to audiences, he tapped out the notes on a much different instrument than most pianos used today. Among the differences was the wire inside his instrument."

For the full story, please see Discovery News.

Departmental delivery from the UW Libraries and beyond... at no cost for current UW faculty and staff!

This service is for current UW faculty and staff at the Bothell, Seattle, and Tacoma campuses. The UW Libraries will pull material from our shelves, check it out to you and send it to your department via the campus mail. Summit and Interlibrary Loan material can also be sent to your department.

To Place a Request:

• Request an item through the library catalog and select "Send to Fac-Staff UW Mailbox" as your pickup location.


• Items must be sent to a valid campus box number. Check your campus box number in your library account. If the address is not correct you will need to change your address by accessing the Employee Self-Service web site. It may take a week or so for our information to be updated.

What To Expect:

• Materials held on the UW campus will be delivered in 1-2 days, not including weekends.


• Materials held by Summit libraries will be delivered in 5-7 days, not including weekends. This accounts for transit time from the Summit library, plus campus mail delivery time.


• Materials requested through ILL will be delivered in 10-14 days, not including weekends. This accounts for transit time from the loaning library, plus campus mail delivery time.


• When we send material to you it will appear in your library account as already checked out to you.


• We will contact you if the material is not available or cannot be sent. We will use the email address in your library account to notify you of problems with delivery, so please make sure the email address in your account is one you check regularly.


• To assess the service we will be surveying participants. You can also send comments at any time to suzzcirc@u.washington.edu.

Returning Material

• Send material back to Suzzallo Circulation, Box 352900 or drop off at any UW library unit.


• If mailing the material please try to use the original packaging or something similar.


• To allow for mailing time you should send material back at least 2 days before the due date.

Background Information

• Departmental delivery will improve access to the physical collections for UW faculty and staff who are not located close to library units.


• Building on their existing service, the UW Campus Mail have agreed to handle the delivery of library materials at no charge.


• The overall costs of the service to the Libraries are expected to be minimal.


• We are initiating this service as a pilot and will evaluate the costs and benefits during the next few months. Your comments are important to us so please fill out the survey when requested.

*Limitations

• UW students are not part of the pilot.


• Cascadia Community College faculty, staff and students are not part of the pilot.


• Material that does not circulate (Reference, Special Collections, etc.) and material on reserve are not available for delivery.


• Fragile or large items may not be available for delivery.


• This pilot provides for sending only to campus mail addresses. If you want to have a book sent to an off-campus address through the US mail Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Services can provide this service for a $10 fee. Login to your ILL account and select Borrow a Book, fill out the form and then select one of the Delivery Options that provides for shipping to home.

10,000 Rare Recordings, Free for Streaming

"The Library of Congress has launched “National Jukebox,” a website that gives free access to over 10,000 recordings made between the years of 1901 and 1925. Recordings, all from the RCA and Columbia vaults now owned by Sony Music, are available for streaming only. The range is vast, from Al Jolson to Enrico Caruso, Nellie Melba, Rachmaninoff and George Gershwin playing “Rhapsody in Blue” with the Paul Whiteman Concert Orchestra."

For the full story, please see musicalicamerica.com.

Playing An Instrument May Help Preserve Hearing

"Some hearing loss is a common — and nearly unavoidable — effect of aging. A third of people 60 and older have lost some of their ability to hear."

For the full story, please see npr.org.

Google to Unveil Service to Let Users Stream Their Music

" Google plans to introduce its long-awaited service to allow people to upload and store their music collections on the Web and listen to their songs on Android phones or tablets and on computers."

For the full story, please see the New York Times.

JoAnn Falletta to Ulster Orchestra

"The Ulster Orchestra has named Buffalo Philharmonic Music Director JoAnn Falletta to succeed Kenneth Montgomery as its principal conductor. She is the first American and first woman to take the position since the orchestra’s founding in 1966."

For the full story, please see Musical America.

Download Sales: Will Money Stay With Labels Or Go To Musicians?

"A recent move by the Supreme Court could mean millions of dollars in additional royalty payments for older musicians who signed contracts before the digital era."

For the full story, please see npr.org.

The Jazz Fan Who Invented A Machine To Make His Own Mashups

"The first thing is that it's actually pretty cool. There's some electronic music out there which sounds like "jazzy," lounge-y wallpaper — which takes, say, a Sarah Vaughan sample and layers it over a plodding beat. This is, at least in my estimation, a good deal more creative than that."

For the full story, please see npr.org.

The Myth of the Starving Artist

"Conventional wisdom has long held that pursuing a career in the arts is a likely ticket to a life of perennial unhappiness, hunger and unemployment. But the opposite appears to be true -- graduates of arts programs are likely to find jobs and satisfaction, even if they won't necessarily get wealthy in the process -- according to a new national survey of more than 13,000 alumni of 154 different arts programs."

For the full story, please see Inside Higher Ed.

The Kronos Quartet's Double Exposure

"It says something about San Francisco's new music group the Kronos Quartet that they've won honors from two very dissimilar organizations on the same day."

For the full story, please see npr.org.

Behind the music: Why Eminem could spell major trouble for the major labels

The question of whether a digital download counts as a straight sale or a licence threatens to cost Universal Music millions

For the full story, please see The Guardian.

Steve Reich At (Nearly) 75

"This October, composer Steve Reich is turning 75 — an age that for many other artists, especially ones as widely adored as Reich, wouldn't be marked by much more than a few valedictory laps. Instead, he continues to make innovative music and is still one of the most important and influential voices of our era."

For the full story, please see npr.org.