Music Online

Free Download: Jean-Claude Naude's Tell Me a Jazz Story

French trumpeter and composer Jean-Claude Naude composed and performed many jazz pieces and wrote other light classical works.

This recording of 'Tell Me a Jazz Story' is performed by the Ensemble de Cuivres Epsilon & Orchestre D'Harmonie de la Garde Republicaine.

Download this work now at http://musicdownloads.alexanderstreet.com/promo/

All tracks downloaded through this promotion are owned by Alexander Street Press and are available to legally download, free of cost to the user.

Photo by Wayne Silver

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.

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.

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.

Streaming music collections go mobile

We've just enabled mobile access to ALL of our streaming music collections, making it possible for patrons at subscribing libraries to listen using internet-enabled smart phones and other mobile devices. Mobile access options include QR codes (like the one below), automatic email or SMS text delivery, and navigating to a mobile-friendly URL. Every recording, album, and playlist can now be accessed on-the-go.

The QR code above can be scanned with with your smart phone, and will connect you directly to an e-album of music from the movie Pride & Prejudice. The e-album can then be streamed on your mobile device through August 31, 2010. QR readers are readily available as free or inexpensive add-on applications, and many mobile phones come with QR readers pre-installed. If your 3G mobile device is connected to the web but does not have a camera, you can simply go to http://goasp.it/austen to stream the e-album. To see other working examples of QR codes, check out the Resource Shelf.

Later in 2010, Alexander Street video collections will be streamed to mobile devices. For more information on mobile access, read the press release.

Music Advisory Rountable at ALA

If you're heading to ALA in Washington, D.C., why not give our music editors 45 minutes of your time at our Music Advisory Roundtable? Conveniently located in the Washington Convention Center, our roundtable gives you the chance to voice your opinion and provide feedback on our current and future music collections. In exchange for your time we'll give you the opportunity to win a one-year subscription.

Our streaming audio content will triple in size by the end of 2010, we have new features, functionality, and cross-search enhancements to tell you about, and we're lowering prices. Be among the first to hear about all of it by attending this advisory roundtable and giving us your input!

The Music Advisory Roundtable is one of five roundtables we're hosting at ALA. You can learn more and RSVP here.

New music content released

Alexander Street's Music Online continues to grow, with new content recently added to Jazz Music Library, Contemporary World Music, and Opera in Video.

Over 1,500 tracks from 120 albums were recently added to Jazz Music Library. The new albums come from labels including Concord Jazz, Contemporary, Jazz Alliance, Jazzology, Neon Tonic, Playboy Jazz, and Riverside. The newly added recordings feature performers such as Bobby Darin, Sonny Rollins, Pete Escovedo, Art Farmer, Doc Evans, Sarah Vaughan, Tito Puente, and more.

New subtitles for 23 performances, including Don Giovanni, Carmen, La Boheme, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Le Nozze di Figaro, and Macbeth, were added to Opera in Video.

Contemporary World Music has grown by over 3,800 tracks. Newly added music comes from ARC Music, Blue Flame Records, Buda Musique, Celestial Harmonies, INEDIT, Lyrichord, PAN Records, and Tropical Music. Genres and sub-genres covered in the new content include Afro-pop, cumbia, electronic music, world fusion, klezmer, griot music, joropo, funeral music, and more.

Music Online now contains over 258,000 tracks for US and Canadian customers (over 223,000 tracks for customers outside of the US and Canada).

New music content uploaded

Several new albums, scores, and reference works were added to Music Online last month, and are now available to subscribing libraries. New content was added to Classical Music Library, Jazz Music Library, Classical Scores Library, African American Music Reference, and Classical Music Reference Library.

Newly added reference content includes Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties by Scott Saul (African American Music Reference), and 7 titles on classical composers like Wagner, Mendelsshon, and Haydn from Princeton University Press (Classical Music Reference Library.)

71 new scores from Faber Music and Universal Edition were added to Classical Scores Library, including compositions by Beethoven, Mahler, Mozart, Schumann, and more.

New albums added to Classical Music Library come from Mode Records, Mark Custom, Celestial Harmonies, and Lyrichord. Jazz Music Library has been updated with dozens of new albums from Jazzology, Original Jazz Classics, Pablo, and Prestige.

Remember, you can see a complete list of newly added content in each of our online music collections by clicking the "What's New" tab in the top toolbar.

Music Online now contains over 255,000 tracks*, close to 65,000 pages of text reference, almost 17,000 scores, and over 400 videos.

For more information on Music Online or any of the individual music collections, please email sales@alexanderstreet.com.

* Music Online customers in the US and Canada currently have access to over 255,000 tracks from over 17,000 albums. Customers in all other territories currently have access to over 220,000 tracks from over 15,000 albums.

MLA trial access

Last month's Music Library Association meeting in San Diego was a huge success. We'd like to thank everyone who attended our MLA Customer Appreciation Breakfast (our largest ever), and everyone that stopped by our booth in the exhibit hall. If you weren't able to make it to the breakfast, you can view Tim Lloyd's PowerPoint presentation on our Web site.

And just a reminder, all MLA members can enjoy free trial access to all of our online music collections, as well as Ethnographic Video Online. To begin your free trial, go to http://alexanderstreet.com/MLA.htm, then use the login credentials printed on the free trial card given to you at MLA. If you have lost or misplaced your trial card, please email marketing@alexanderstreet.com for a username and password. The MLA trial runs through April 30, 2010.