The media have gotten wind of the Amazing Muddinis triumph. View the entire routine on YouTube and glimpse behind-the-scenes action on Flickr®, but only if you don’t mind finding out how at least one of the magic tricks was done.
Category: Music
We’re Number Two!!
It’s official: The Seeley G. Mudd Library’s routine in the Wisconsin Library Association’s Book Cart Drill Team competition is the second best in the state! While we will not be going on to Washington D.C. to compete in the nationals, we are pleased as punch to have beaten last year’s winners.
In keeping with the “Reclaim the Magic” theme of the WLA conference, a full third of the Mudd’s staff participated in an extraordinary and physics-defying spectacle of prestidigitation. Amanda Beck, Cindy Patterson, Kate Moody, Antoinette Powell, Colette Lunday Brautigam and Kim Comerford (also known as ACK ACK) donned magician’s garb and wowed the packed house.
Observe the Amazing Muddinis (and their competition) in action on our local newscast.
LU CDs
Today’s CD pile features the many and varied talents of Lawrence University’s students and faculty. We have student and faculty performers, student ensembles, faculty composers, a passel of visiting artists, a visiting composer and a premiere commercial CD. As always, this is the place to be for ALL kinds of music.
At Last: CDs!!
At long last we bring you another batch of CDs new to the library’s collection. Regular readers will recognize the cool flickr® setup whereby one may mouse over a CD and not only find out a little about it, but also link to the CD in our catalog.
Today we have that most excellent percussionist Alison Shaw (who happens to live in Appleton,) some Brazilian jazz and a little Furtwängler for all your Wagner opera excerpt and Brünnhilde immolation needs.
But It’s So WARM!
A word for you non-natives: beware the feelings of euphoria that will descend upon you this next week. It is predicted that temperatures will soar well into the “not freezing” portion of the spectrum. This is a tease. Here is a snapshot of what April (in this case, 2007) can look like in Appleton. Winter has a long way to go. Keep that long underwear at the ready.
In the meantime, get over your cabin fever by checking out a CD featuring the tune “Cabin fever” as performed by Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland and Joey Calderazzo.
Che Bella!
We’re cutting. We’re on the edge. We’re on the cutting edge. Sunday’s New York Times featured an article by Anthony Tommasini about bel canto: What is it really? Who does it? Why do we care?
Here at the Mudd we just happen to have a CD mentioned in this article as being one of the best in bel canto, whatever it is:
Maria Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (M1500.D683 L8 1989,) a reissue of the 1953 recording. Tommasini calls this “a milestone in the discography of opera.”
We call it beautiful singing.
Da Symphony.
Ordinarily we would not be all that excited about breathing the same air as Chicago. But our big sister to the south has been mightily honored. The highly respected magazine out of Great Britain, Gramophone, conducted a poll of classical music critics to determine the best orchestras in the world. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra ranked at the top of U.S. orchestras.
We applaud the Second City’s recognition, particularly after the embarrassment of a recent unfortunate sporting-related incident.
Read all about it on NPR.
And, needless to say, the Mudd has boatloads of CSO recordings.
Handel Chrysander Edition Online!
The Chrysander edition of George Frideric Handel’s complete works is available online from the Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum (the Munich Digitisation Centre) of the Digital Library Department of the Bavarian State Library. The Library has a nice English language interface, but searching is a little odd. And it helps to know some German. The digital collection “comprises manuscripts, early prints, modern books, maps and photographic collections as well as journals and newspapers.” The access is free, but the images are not downloadable or printable. Still, it’s one-stop-viewing if you’re looking for a picture of Jimi Hendrix AND images of every book published in German-speaking areas in the 16th century.
IMSLP is Back!
The International Music Score Library Project is back in business after overcoming financial and legal assaults. “IMSLP attempts to create a virtual library containing all public domain musical scores, as well as scores from composers who are willing to share their music with the world without charge,” in other words, a boatload of free scores. This is a wiki, however, so edit if you must, but try to stifle your inner imp.
Buried [Music] Treasure
Does trying to find music-related materials on the Web make you crazy? Try this guide to finding scores recordings, lyrics and other musical mayhem in no particular order, just to make the hunt all the more thrilling. It’s mostly free and mostly legal.