Music Online

"Gypsy Davy" by Margaret MacArthur

"Gypsy Davy" by Margaret MacArthur from the album "Folksongs of Vermont" (FW05314)

Born in 1928 in Chicago, Illinois, Margaret MacArthur spent her childhood moving around the western United States. Her first contact with folk music came in 1933, when her father began work at an Arizona timber company with displaced cowboys and folk singers who had collected songs throughout their travels. In 1948 MacArthur moved to Vermont, where she gathered the songs presented here from churches, friends, and broadsides found near her farm. When speaking of her death, Margaret MacArthur’s granddaughter Robin wrote, "On her deathbed she was sick with morphine, most of her memory gone, but she could still remember the lyrics to any ballad we asked her to sing. This music had etched itself into her soul; song and landscape and self had twined into a fabric that was lasting, resounding, and full of grace."

 

For more information, and to download this track, click here at http://alexanderstreet.com/GLMUdownload.htm

Banned music

In honor of Banned Books Week, we've created a playlist of banned music. If your library subscribes to Music Online, you can listen to this playlist now at http://muco.alexanderstreet.com/Playlists/View/340996.

The playlist features performances by Otis Redding, Pete Seeger, Giuseppe Verdi, Muddy Waters, Hank Ballard & The Midnighters, and others.

Interface enhancement for Music Online

We've made an important change to the Music Online interface based on the feedback from our customers.

We've moved the drop-down list, which allows users to go directly to the individual music collections that make up Music Online, from the bottom of every page to the top.  It is now located on the upper left hand side of the page underneath the About | System Requirements links.

We hope this change makes it easier for users to understand that they can search each of the music collections individually, in their native interface, as well as on the cross-search Music Online platform at music.alexanderstreet.com.

Free Download: "Frankie and Johnny"

Our featured download from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is "Frankie and Johnny" from the album Rappahannock Blues, performed by John Jackson. Raised in a large, musical farm family in Rappahannock County, Virginia, Jackson (1924-2002) was the most important black Appalachian musician to come to broad public attention during the mid-1960s. For more information, and to download this track, click here.

This track is owned by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and is available, free of charge, for a limited time only. Be sure to join our mailing list for regular email updates every time a new track becomes available.

EMI comes to Jazz Music Library

Jazz Music Library, already the largest and most comprehensive collection of jazz recordings online, now includes music from EMI and several EMI sub-labels. We've just added 850 albums (8,000 tracks!) from Blue Note, Angel Records, Capitol Records, Vanguard Records, and EMI. All of these recordings are available at streaming rates of 192 kbps AND 320 kbps!

These newly added labels feature music from jazz legends including Benny Goodman, Buddy Rich, Bobby McFerrin, Nancy Wilson, Cassandra Wilson, Wynton Marsalis, Louis Prima, Nigel Kennedy, Bernadette Peters, and others. Examples of recordings are:

• Duke Ellington Live at the Blue Note
• The Complete Imperial Sessions: Sonny Criss
• The Rudy van Gelder Edition CDs of Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Walter Davis Jr, Andrew Hill, Dexter Gordon, and more
• Benny Green Live at the Village Vanguard
• David Axelrod at Capitol Records (1966-1970)
• The Complete Capitol Recordings of Art Tatum
• The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Herbie Nichols
• Kenny Burrell 75th Birthday Bash Live

This material is available to all Jazz Music Library subscribers in all regions except Japan. For more information, and to request a free trial or price quote for your library, please contact sales@alexanderstreet.com.

August issue of Music Media Monthly is live

The August issue of Music Media Monthly is now live at http://musicmediamonthly.com. This month's issue features something for everyone. Videos reviewed include Falstaff, Aida, and Lulu, and the sound recordings column contains reviews of albums by Lily Storm, Dejah Léger, and Roots Manuva. This month's book reviews focus on American classical composers, and the Web site column is devoted to the Sacred Steel tradition.

Music Media Monthly is your guide to the best music-related books, videos, Web sites, and recordings. Check out the August issue now, and be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, email notification, or bookmark the site. We also encourage you to leave feedback for the editor and authors.

More new music content!

Just when you thought we were done adding content to Music Online this week, we went out and uploaded another batch of new content.

Three new titles have been added to African American Music Reference—Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers by Doug Ramsey, The Pilgrim Jubilees by Alan Young, and Rythm Oil: A Journey Through the Music of the American South by Stanley Booth.

We've also added Women Composers: Music Through the Ages, Vol. 8 by Sylvia Glickman and Martha Furman Schleifer to Classical Music Reference Library.

Classical Music Library gained 24 new albums from Wirripang, including contemporary compositions by Australian composers. New material from composers Betty Beath, Phillip Wilcher, John Martin, Jeanell Carrigan, Hugh Dixon, and others is now available.

Opera in Video now contains the 1956 recording of Casta Diva from Bel Canto Society, a film biography of Bellini's life, with performances of famous arias from his operas. The film features Caterina Mancini, Gianni Poggi and Giulio Neri.

Finally, an another 18,000+ pages of sheet music has been added to Classical Scores Library. The new content includes material from the Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance and Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era. Composers include Johannes Mouton, Pierre de la Rue, Tomaso Albinoni, Adriano Banchieri, Francesco Gasparini, Michel Lambert, Jacopo Peri, Giovanni Felice Sances, Orazio Vecchi, Adrian Willaert, and more.

Music Online now contains over 299,000 tracks for US and Canadian customers (over 264,000 for customers in other countries), nearly 67,000 pages of full-text reference, close to 24,000 scores, and over 400 streaming videos.

Celebrate Bastille Day with a free streaming playlist

We're celebrating Bastille Day by offering a free streaming playlist for your mobile device. Simply scan the QR code below with your smartphone, or visit http://goasp.it/july14 on your 3G mobile device, and listen to music celebrating le quatorze juillet.

This free playlist can be streamed on your mobile device through August 15. Enjoy and bonne écoute!

July issue of Music Media Monthly is live

The July issue of Music Media Monthly is available now, and touches upon a wide range of topics and formats.

Authors Gene Hyde, Anne Shelley, Steve Dankner, and Rick Anderson discuss several excellent blues-oriented websites; recently-released video titles on Christoph von Dohnányi, Philip Glass, and Howard Goodall; books about American composers and opera; and recordings ranging from Renaissance polyphony to British folk to the lo-fi pop artistry of the Apples in Stereo.

Music Media Monthly is your guide to the best music-related books, videos, Web sites, and recordings. Check out the July issue now, and be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, email notification, or bookmark the site. We also encourage you to leave feedback for the editor and authors.

New music content added

We've just updated several of our online music collections with new content, which is available now to subscribers worldwide.

New music reference content includes I Dream A World: The Operas of William Grant Still by Beverly Soll, currently available in African American Music Reference. Classical Scores Library has been updated with over 11,000 pages from A-R Editions and Publications by Wirripang. The new scores include material from the Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance and Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era (A-R Editions), and feature composers Andrea Gabrieli, Orlando de Lassus, Claude le Jeune, Orazio Vecchi, Andre Pevernage, Costanzo Festa, Johannes Martini, and others. Contemporary Australian composers (Publications by Wirripang) include Betty Beath, Sylvia Rice, Diana Blom, Colin Brumby, Houston Dunleavy, Amanda Handel, Ann Carr-Boyd, and others.

The number of streaming audio tracks in Contemporary World Music has increased by over 35,000. New material in Afro-pop, Argentinian folklore, bachata, bhangra, Carnatic music, dancehall, Fado, flamenco, Ghazal songs, Hindustani, Judaica, Latin, Reggae, Son, and other genres is available from artists including Asha Bhosle, Balkan Beat Box, Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), Mercedes Sosa, Jose Calderón, Gurdas Maan, Artur Paredes, Ghulam Ali, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and many more! New labels include Navras Records, Ariwa Sounds, Charsur, Discos Belter, EMI Pakistan, Hula Records, Indigenous Australia, Living Media India, Ovação, Sagarika Music, and more.

The growing Music Online suite now contains 298,739 tracks from 20,528 albums*, 65,200 pages of full-text reference, 20,867 scores, and 407 videos. Subscriptions to individual collections and Music Online packages are available to libraries worldwide. For more information, please contact sales@alexanderstreet.com.

* Track and album counts listed are for US and Canadian customers only. All other customers have access to 264,071 tracks from 18,039 albums.