New York Philharmonic Historical Data now available online

The New York Philharmonic has launched a new Web site that will allow users to search for historical data about the orchestra. You can read Daniel J. Wakin's article in the New York Times, "Philharmonic Puts Its History by the Numbers Online," here. Thanks to Kirstin Dougan of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for bringing attention to this article by posting about it as well.

Summer Hours

The Music Library began its Summer semester schedule yesterday. From then until August 7, the Music Library will be open Monday through Wednesday from 8:00 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. and on Thursday from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. The Music Library will be closed Friday through Sunday.

During the week of August 10, the Music Library will be open from 8:00 a.m. until 12 noon and from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday; and during the week of August 17, the Music Library will be open from 8:00 a.m. until 12 noon and from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Fall semester hours will resume on Monday, August 24.

New Reference Tool for Orchestral Pops Music

The Music Library recently received Orchestral "Pops" Music: A Handbook, by Lucy Manning (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009). It uses the same format as the familiar orchestral music resource, Orchestral Music: A Handbook, 4th ed., by David Daniels. Works are listed in alphabetical order by composer. Five appendixes index the contents by "instrumentation," "duration," "themes," "title," and "publishers and sources," respectively. This resource can be found in the Music Library reference collection under call no. MUR ML128.O5 M36 2009.

New Jazz resource

Stanford University posted a Web site that allows searching of the Monterey Jazz Festival Collection, a repository of musical sound recordings and interviews from the Monterey Jazz Festival, dating back to 1958. Users can search the collection from this Web site, and they can access samples of the content. To access the entire collection, users must use the collection on-site at Stanford University in Stanford, California.

Blues singer Koko Taylor dies

Chicago-based Blues singer, Koko Taylor, died yesterday. You can read about it at Greg Kot's Chicago Tribune blog, "Turn it Up."