Grammy Nominees in Our Collection

The 59th Annual Grammy awards are on February 12! We have many of the albums and songs nominated, whether on CD or on Naxos Streaming.

NAXOS MUSIC LIBRARY

As an AU Student or staff, you have free access to the entire Naxos Music Library. Naxos has curated playlists of Grammy Nominated songs and albums in their collection which you can stream at home.

Find the Playlist of Grammy Nominees and the Highlights playlist here

We also have several Grammy-nominated albums on CD!

Beyoncé-Lemonade Won Best Urban Contemporary Album, Formation won Best Music Video, Nominated for Album of the Year, Freedom nominated for Best Rap/Sung Performance,  Formation nominated for Record of the Year, Hold Up nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance, Don’t Hurt Yourself nominated for best Rock Performance

Listen: CD 2756

 

Panic at the Disco-Death of a Bachelor Nominated for Best Rock Album

Listen: CD2724

 

 

Solange-A Seat at the Table Cranes in the Sky won Best R&B performance

Listen: CD 2771

 

 

Fred Hersch-Sunday Night at the Vanguard We See nominated for Best improvised jazz solo 

Listen: CD 2742

 

 

Sara Bareilles-Waitress Nominated for Best Musical Theater Album

Listen: CD 2729

 

 

 

Jerry Bock-Fiddler on the Roof Nominated for Best Musical Theater Album

Listen: CD 2521

 

 

The Color Purple (New Broadway Cast) Won Best Musical Theater Album

Listen: CD 2523

 

 

Bright Star-Steve Martin Nominated for Best Musical Theater Album

Listen: CD 2556

 

 

John Williams-Star Wars: The Force Awakens Soundtrack Won Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media

Listen: CD 2628

 

 

Ennio Morricone-The Hateful Eight Soundtrack Nominated for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media 

Listen: CD 2632

 

 

Sissle and Blake Sing Shuffle Along Won Best Album Notes

 

Listen: CD 2562

Also on Naxos

 

Vladimir Horowitz-The Unreleased Live Recordings 1966-1983 Nominated for Best Historical Album

Listen on Naxos

 

 

Music Of Morocco From The Library Of Congress: Recorded By Paul Bowles Nominated for Best Historical Album

Listen: CD 2351

 

 

LA Opera directed by James Conlon-Corigliano: The Ghost of Versailles Won Best Opera Recording         

Listen on Naxos                           

 

 

 

Happy Listening! We’ll update this post with the winners.

 

Cool DC Events: NPR’s Screening a Punk Doc

The impact of Dischord Records and its surrounding miniverse of hardcore and post-hardcore punk is enormous, and its influence is still felt today in D.C. and everywhere. For alternative music fans living in our nation’s capital, it is nearly a ritual to glorify D.C.’s past as a hotbed for a thriving, groundbreaking punk scene.

The latest artifact of this culture has surfaced in an in-depth documentary on the old scene, entitled “Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC (1980-90).” Created by Scott Crawford, a zine publisher-turned-documentarian, the 90 minute film combines unique vintage concert footage with current-day interviews.

In a great tip of the hat to the scene of old, NPR Music will be hosting a screening of this documentary in its DC office. According to their blog, Scott Crawford will appear after the screening on a panel along with Jim Saah, the film’s director of photography, as well as veteran DC punk Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Bad Religion) and moderated by Ally Schweitzer of WAMU.

The event is on Tuesday, May 5 at 7pm. Unfortunately, it’s already been fully sold out, but hopefully you know someone who can get you in! Otherwise, don’t fret. The Library has your back. Come by and ask about our great (and still building) collection of DC punk classic CDs and DVDs! You can celebrate the rich punk legacy of our city here with us.

The Value of Music: Pitchfork weighs in

If you’ve kept up with our blog (I mean why wouldn’t you) you’d know we have a bit of a passing interest in the state of the music industry. With new music streaming platforms revealed every few months or so and the constant specter of declining music sales, the value of music is a mystery, and an ongoing online conversation exists trying to figure out what it really is.

Longtime Pitchfork contributor Marc Hogan has added his voice with an opus of a feature entitled “How Much Is Music Really Worth?“. This piece is essentially a giant economical analysis of the value of music, focused mostly on the shifting value of physical music sales. It includes several interesting infographics such as the one below, analyzing this shift in value.

In addition to his deep analysis of music itself, Hogan also covers topics such as live revenue and music publishing. He does a good job of examining all the facets of music-related income.

However, all of his explication seems to lead him to the inevitable truth that it has become more and more difficult to make a living as a musician. Hogan describes his experience with seeing the band Single Mothers on a tour that wasn’t making them any money, noting that most live revenue goes to a top 1% of performers.

Hogan attempts to end the piece on a positive note, noting that while some may think that music is worthless, worthless is just another word for priceless. He sets the value of music as transcending dollars and cents, which to him is what makes it worth the most. While I agree that music is worth more to me than most things, this seems like a sort of cop out… if the sole value of music is that people enjoy it, how will anybody afford to make it in the future? This is the sort of thing we’ll have to watch play out, I believe.

 

AU Musical Events: A Blast of Brass, 4/11-12

Boy, do I love spring in the AU Department of Performing Arts. It seems as if every new day brings a new performance or event, which means fun and easy blog content! But actually, it is great to walk around Katzen knowing I’ll probably run in on some concert or other. It’s an exciting artistic environment!

As you all know, tonight is our AU Jazz Orchestra’s spring concert, sure to be a wild time, but do you think our performing arts students and faculty will take the weekend off afterwards? No way! Instead, AU’s Chamber Singers are partnering up with the Rockville Brass Band to bring you “A Blast of Brass!” on both Saturday and Sunday.

Led, respectively, by our own Dan Abraham and the appropriately-named Nigel Horne, these two ensembles will join in a rendition of John Rutter’s “Gloria,” as well as traditional British Brass Band works by Eric Ball, Peter Graham and Richard Strauss. What a sturdy trio of names.

The events will occur at 8pm tomorrow and 3pm on Sunday afternoon, both in the Abramson Recital Hall in Katzen. Tickets are $10 for the general public and $5 for AU community members and seniors. RSVP for the facebook event, and find tickets here!

NPR Music’s April Fools Day Quiz

Happy April Fools Day! If you’ve dodged the day’s arsenal whoopee cushions, squirting flowers and horrifying lies on your way to work or school, take the time to reward yourself with this fun quiz from the homies at NPR Music.

Entitled “Can You Name That Musical Prank,” this quiz poses seven questions relating to musical pranks involving everybody from The Doors and The Beatles to Cannonball Adderley and Sergei Rachmaninoff, including audio samples of the pranks, which include some fun fake albums, pseudonyms and scams!

Enjoy, and have a sad, sad April Fools… haha, just kidding, you know.

The Inspiring Composer Behind the “House of Cards” Theme

We’ve covered a few NPR All Things Considered music interviews in the past: eco-experimental classical composer John Luther Adams and indie rock producer du jour John Congleton (coincidentally both named John). Last week ATC featured another crucial musician, one Jeff Beal, composer of the eerie-yet-sophisticated House of Cards theme.

Beal, who has also composed music for shows such as Monk, The Newsroom, and Carnivale, as well as the heartbreaking SeaWorld documentary Blackfish, describes the “musical joke” of the main theme. The bass line plays an ostinato in A minor for the duration of the theme, but the melody often slips into A Major, causing fleeting dissonances that set the tone well for the sinister TV series.

One cool fact about Beal is that he has taken the writing, arranging, and even recording process entirely into his own hands. He has no assistance with the writing and arranging of his scores, and records a 17-piece string ensemble in his living room. He also plays the trumpet, piano and guitar parts, and his talented musical family helps out as well: his wife Joan has recorded vocals for the score and their son Henry contributed the main bass line, recording from his dorm room.

Another awesome revelation is that Beal has managed to take such a hands-on role, despite his diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. While this crippling nervous disease began to show symptoms eight years ago, Beal’s combination of “alternative treatments” and strongly focused brain activity (via his feverish composing and recording) have managed to reverse brain atrophy and keep the disease at bay.

Jeff Beal is truly inspiring, as well as one of the coolest composers in the game (David Fincher hired him for House of Cards before even shooting it), and you should all check out this feature.

The New York Philharmonic: Full Digital Archives!

You all know how much we here at the music library love archives, and rightly so! They are a great way to delve into the past, and to witness the evolution of your research topic throughout history.

Speaking of archives, an enormous archive has just been finished, that of the New York Philharmonic. That’s right, they’ve finished the massive undertaking of archiving every single performance program published since their founding year of 1842. So now you can go back through 173 years (count ’em!) of NY Phil concert programs, 13,300 in total.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Their site notes that among these programs are such historically significant ones as “those from the 1865 memorial concert for Abraham Lincoln; the 1893 World Premiere of Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World; the 1928 World Premiere of Gershwin’s An American in Paris, with program notes by the composer; the concert that took place on December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor Day; for the free downtown chamber concerts given after 9/11 for those working near the ruins of the World Trade Center; and from the Philharmonic’s national and international tours, including Toscanini’s 1930 European Tour and the 2008 tour to Pyongyang, D.P.R.K., led by then Music Director Lorin Maazel.” Not quite actual audio recordings, but we’ll take it!

They also make sure to mention that these archives are free and accessible online to all researchers. I have a feeling this will be of major use to many music students at AU and worldwide. And even if you’re not researching for any specific purpose, it has to be exciting to walk down American classical music’s memory lane and hear the language of these classic documents. Check them out here!

So proud of our Grammy winning CD, St. Vincent!

So guess what, readers? We have, on our shelves, a Grammy winning album (in CD form). No, not the Beck album; we’re staying out of that debate. No, we’re talking about the best Alternative Music Album, aka St. Vincent’s self-titled fourth full length, and it is a BEAST.

This album is a well-deserved winner, the clear best choice of 2015’s nominations, and an example of an artist in her prime, and continuing to evolve. 2012’s Strange Mercy, her previous album, was the perfect crystallization of sounds she had been developing on her first two releases. St. Vincent is the logical next step, seeing her pursue a darker, funkier sound and a new, cult-leader alter ego (seen below on the album cover):

However, in her excitement at becoming a Grammy-winning artist, the artist formerly known as Annie Clark stepped out of her persona to write a sweet thank you note to all of her fans. It describes, briefly, her musical journey from the outset of becoming “St. Vincent” to the present day. Read it here: http://ilovestvincent.com/#news

She also held a brief interview with Pitchfork and a longer one with i-D immediately after her win, revealing her excited mood in the wake of such a triumph. While the Grammys often seem out-of-touch and archaic, this award shows that they still possess a shred of “with it.” We’ll see what they pick next year. Meanwhile, celebrate with St. Vincent by checking out her album and seeing what’s so special about it yourself!

Björk on Pitchfork, Björk on our shelves!

Not sure if you’ve been around the internet, but this interview that Pitchfork held with Björk has been making the rounds among those passionate about music & gender equality (two great things to care about, imo).

In this interview with P4k’s Jessica Hopper, Björk touches on several issues, all of which surrounding the release of her new album Vulnicura, out on One Little Indian. First of all, this album takes the role of Björk’s “breakup album.” For Björk, Vulnicura is a catharsis of the emotion of leaving her longtime partner. While all of Björk’s releases have contained songs touching on love and interpersonal relationships, this album narrows the scope, and the subject matter is now her love and her interpersonal relationships. It is far more personal than  her previous releases, and in this interview there are several times where the Icelandic artist begins to cry simply thinking about it.

While this alone would make for a great interview, Björk took it to the next level when beginning to discuss taking credit for her music. It seems that in the press release rollout for Vulnicura, co-producer Arca (a man) was given full credit for producing this album, while Björk had actually simply brought him in to collaborate at the end. While Arca tweeted about this attempting to rectify the error, this misinformation was still posted all over the internet.

Björk was upset by this but sadly not surprised, given that male collaborators had been unduly given credit for her ideas for her entire career. In this interview she laments the fact that female songwriters and artists often have credit for their music co-opted by male collaborators. With an album as personal as Vulnicura, it’s ridiculous that Björk wasn’t even given shared credit by many sites. Hopefully this interview will set off some sort of paradigm shift among music fans (and critics), and a mistake like that won’t plague Björk the next time she releases an album.

While we don’t have Vulnicura on CD (yet), we do have several Björk albums, her first three solo albums Debut, Post and Homogenic and her most recent album Biophilia. If you’re inspired by this interview, come check ’em out!

Cool DC Events: DC Music Download’s 3rd birthday @ 9:30 Club

Welcome to February! A cold and dark month, February nonetheless manages to be a good month for birthdays. I bet you have a few friends with February birthdays. And then there’s all those presidents. Heck, even my birthday is in February! (No bias, I swear).

Another important birthday comes in February as well, that of DC Music Download, a music website that has become a large part of the D.C. scene, covering and supporting local bands in reviews and with events. This year, they’re celebrating their third birthday (an eternity in internet time), at none other than that classic D.C. venue, the 9:30 Club!

This Saturday night (2/7/2015) at 7pm, the party begins with DJ Ayescold, known for the wide-ranging musical reference of her sets. After her comes Baby Bry Bry & The Apologists, a loudly emotional band of “lounge punks.” Next is a crew of punk veterans’ new project Loud Boyz, and closing the show are crucial local mainstays, the psych-rock band Paperhaus. These guys, who also own a house show of the same name, have supported the scene around them for years, and at this event the scene is paying them back with a record release show at the 9:30 club. Sure to be a moving event. There will also be a D.C. music photography exhibit present, anchoring the 3 year-old website as a part of its city’s legacy.

Anyways, it’s this Saturday, and tickets are $16. An extra cool twist is that $1 of each ticket purchase will go to supporting the D.C. Public Library’s Punk Archive! Which, you should know, we’re big fans of here. So do something cool with your Saturday night! Attend a “happening” event, see some cool music, and support the indie scene in D.C. at this great birthday party.