Business and Pleasure–Day Two: St. Paul and Minneapolis
I arrived in St. Paul, Minnesota, early on Saturday morning for the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) conference. After checking into the hotel and getting a short nap, I attended several presentations and ended the day at their awards dinner. I kept my acceptance of their Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research pretty brief, admitting my surprise at receiving their 2023 Best Discography in Research on Recorded Blues, Soul, R&B, Gospel, or Hip Hop award category for my book, Recorded Solo Concert Spirituals, 1916-2022, because of the high level of competition. Sorry, no pictures. Anyway, I got a fairly early start on Sunday morning since I had reservation for a tour of nearby Minneapolis. I lived only a four-hour drive away from Minneapolis for nearly two decades, but only now was I going to get to see the city. I chose the Narrated Scenic Trolley Tour that…
Look Out, Cincinnati… The Music Librarians Are Here! (Part 2)
Saturday, March 5 Over the many years that I have either presented or attended a lecture, I have learned that you have to allow time for setup, especially if you are depending upon the available technology to work properly. Well, for this lecture, I was heavily depending upon not only whatever equipment was available in the room, but my own computer–a two-in-one I had fairly recently purchased for occasions just like that. Let’s just say I was unnerved and not a little pissed that my computer decided to do a 20-minute-long update only 25 minutes before my presentation was scheduled to start without asking me if that was okay. IT WASN’T!!!! The MLA American Music Roundtable had invited me to give a demonstration of my nearly one-year-old online resource, The Spirituals Database. I talked about how the site was organized and who the primary audience was–voice teachers and singers–plus how…
Look Out, Cincinnati… The Music Librarians Are Here! (Part 1)
So, let me start by saying “I missed RB!” Since the trip for the Music Library Association conference was work-related, I decided to get a rental. They gave me this monstrous six-passenger mini-van that I had to get used to driving. Discovered halfway there that I had put the van into S4, which is better suited for mountain driving and burns gas like crazy. The vehicle was okay, but I just didn’t have fun driving it like I normally do with RB. This is, basically, the trip route: Anyway, the conference was headquartered at the Hilton Netherland Plaza in the middle of Cincinnati. Arrived much later than I’d planned–partially due to missing my I-74 exit in Indianapolis and taking a much longer trip around their beltway than expected, so I missed visiting the Underground Railroad museum (will have to make a later trip to get it done). Thursday, March 3…
Denver Goes to the Spirituals
Missed most of Friday’s conference. Really wanted to catch the afternoon presentations, but events prevented that from happening. C’est la vie… Saturday, though, was stupendous. As usual, waited until the last moment to put together my Powerpoint presentation, even added two slides less than an hour before the session started. Still, gave the presentation on singing dialect twice to enthusiastic audiences. Mainly talked about why dialect should be considered in performance of spiritual art songs and resources–especially recordings–where its use can be studied. The lecture included musical excerpts performed by historical and contemporary singers such as Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, Robert McFerrin and Jessye Norman. I was even daring enough to compare the incomparable Donnie Ray Albert’s recording of the Hale Smith setting of “I’m Going to Die Easy,” which he sang without dialect, with mine–which is pretty heavily spiced with dialect. For the recital part of my lecture-recital, I…
Greetings from Denver!!
Got into Denver about 9:15 p.m. MDT. Pushed to get in with enough time to get (for me) a full night’s sleep before attending tomorrow’s conference activities. Glad my mother’s flying in to meet me here rather than in Iowa because I made the drive with only one 15-minute stop once I left Des Moines–where the hair stylist did an herculean job of bringing my hair under control–and I wouldn’t have put her through that. The trip included an extremely heavy rain with winds strong enough that even I decided I needed to slow down. Just hope most of that rain took out the fires ravaging Colorado. Speaking of flying, RB and I were pleasantly surprised to see the speed limit from west of Omaha into the Denver suburbs rise to 75 mph. Except for the aforementioned rain and the many construction sites, we made very good time, shaving over…