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Lewis
Music Library Joins Boston-based Collection Project
--Lynn Heinemann,
MIT Office of the Arts
(Published in Tech Talk 3/1/2000)
As part of an initiative by the Boston Library Consortium (BLC),
MIT's Rosalind Denny Lewis Music Library has joined forces with
eight other regional academic and research libraries to collect
the published works of selected contemporary music composers.
The cooperative agreement will address an underrepresentation of
living composers in music libraries, said Lewis Music Librarian
Peter Munstedt. As part of the agreement, the individual libraries
will collect the published works of their selected composers which
will then be available through collection sharing with other BLC
members. Other participating schools include Brandeis University,
Boston University, Tufts University and Wellesley College.
The Boston Library Consortium, founded in 1970, is a cooperative
association of 16 large academic and research libraries. Its purpose
is to share human and information resources so that the collective
strengths of the group advance the research and learning of the
members' constituents.
Composers Libby Larsen, Osvaldo Golijov and Roger Reynolds were
chosen by MIT. "Much to my surprise, all the composers wrote back or telephoned
to express their excitement about this project," Dr. Munstedt said,
adding that Ms. Larsen even sent the library a box of her latest
published scores.
LARSEN TO SPEAK AT MUSIC LIBRARY PERFORMANCE
Ms.
Larsen will visit MIT on Wednesday, March 1, 2000 to tour the Lewis
Music Library, meet faculty and students and discuss her music
at an informal performance for the MIT community from 4-5pm in
the Lewis Music Library. Selections of Ms. Larsen's music for solo
instruments, chorus, and solo voice will be performed by MIT faculty
and students.
In the last 20 years, Ms. Larsen has produced numerous works for
orchestra, dance, opera, choral, chamber and solo performance.
Her honors include a 1994 Grammy for the CD, The Art of Arlene
Auger, which features Ms. Larsen's Sonnets from the Portuguese.
Her opera, Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus, was selected as
one of the eight best classical music events of 1990 by USA Today.
"My style can be recognized by its rhythm more than anything else,"
Ms. Larsen said in a 1996 interview. "I believe that music springs
from language of the people. I am intensely interested in how music
can be derived from the rhythms and pitches of spoken American
English."
In 1973, Ms. Larsen, who makes her home in Minneapolis, MN, co-founded
the Minnesota Composer's Forum, a composer's cooperative which
became the model for promoting and establishing composers in America.
She has served as composer in residence with the Minnesota Orchestra
and the Charlotte Symphony and is an advisor to many musical organizations
including the National Endowment for the Arts, ASCAP and the American
Symphony Orchestra League.
Dr. Munstedt hopes that Mr. Golijov and Mr. Reynolds will also
visit MIT and discuss their compositions.
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