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Brand from Home | January 14, 2021



Music Playlists


Listen to a streaming playlist from Freegal Music, Naxos Music Library, Naxos Jazz Music Library, Hoopla or Music Online from Alexander Street free with your library card. Alexander Street will ask for an academic institution, use Glendale Public Library.


Get a free Glendale Library, Arts & Culture Library eCard instantaneously. It can be used to access online resources including eBooks, eAudiobooks, eNewspapers, eMagazines, online classes, online tutoring, and learning games, as well as streaming movies and music, and more.


Today's recommending listening is Spanish guitar with Pablo Sainz Villegas, Prince, the soundtrack from the series Cobra Kai, and oud classics from Armenia, the Balkans and the Middle East.

Learn About Music

An Introduction to Music Appreciation is a self-paced class available for free via Universal Class using your library card. Sixteen one hour lessons providing 1.6 Continuing Education Units. Learn things like: How did 16th century music find its way to the top of the popularity charts in the 1980s? How did a fire bring about the first Broadway musical?


The Jazz Academy YouTube Channel is the media library of educational videos produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center. Students learn about jazz's distinctly American heritage and history as well as its greatest musicians and compositions; they explore its connection to other art forms, and also study how to play jazz.


Classics Explained is narrated by British broadcaster Jeremy Siepmann, and is available on Naxos Music Library. There are eight volumes in the series on works of Beethoven, Bach, Stravinsky and more. You can find other performances of these works on Naxos after listening to Siepmann.





Read About Music

Did you know that the Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive has Billboard Magazine issues back to 1894? Variety issues back to 1905? Radio and Records issues back to 1973? Musician issues back to 1982? Login with your library card!


Streaming Music

Join With Love From LA for a conversation and concert. LA-born and raised, Filipina multi-instrumentalist Low Leaf was trained on classical piano, but taught herself harp, guitar, singing and beatmaking. Along the way she’s been pivotal to the emergence of LA’s early 00’s beat scene, released multiple albums through her own creatorDIY platform, evolved her craft into sound healing and at times connecting plants to her instruments using MIDIsprout to harness nature directly into her process.

 

Art Online

Celebrate with MoAD on the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Day of Service! They offer a full day of online programming to honor the work of Dr. King. Through stories, spoken word poetry, art and performance, they reflect on the importance of justice and protest in our diverse communities.



The Black & Brown Comix Arts Festival (BCAF) is a free, virtual festival that celebrates the creativity of people of color in the comic arts and popular visual culture and is dedicated to the notion that all audiences deserve to be subject in the culture in which we participate.



The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University offers a free, four-day film festival and webinar, from the evening of Jan. 15 through Jan.18, 2021. The festival will feature twenty documentaries as well as musical performances and conversations that speak to Dr. King's unanswered question: "Where do we go from here?"






Art Podcasts

Spend some relaxing time with your imagination and build pictures in your mind with art podcasts:


Try It at Home

Let’s make Pom-Poms! You will need cardboard, four binder clips or paperclips, a good pair of scissors or cutting tool, string or thread and extra yarn. Begin by tracing out four circles on a piece of cardboard. You can use a roll of tape or jar lid to trace. Draw a line through the middle of each circle and add 1/2" to the bottom of the line. You will cut out four elongated half circles. Then cut out the center of each so they are U shaped like the arc of a rainbow. Fold out the bottom 1/2" of each arc in the same direction to form feet. Match up two cardboard U shapes. Wind the yarn around both of the U shapes in one continuous layer, working only to the folds on the base of the U shapes.

If you want just a single color pom-pom, continue winding with your yarn until the central half circle is filled in. If you wish to make stripes, keep adding layers of alternating colors until the central half circle is filled in. Repeat with the other pair of U shapes.

If you wish to make polka dots, wind your alternate color yarn in two (or three) spots only, and then cover them up with a layer of your background yarn.

Flap out the “feet” of your U shapes as shown and binder clip the two sets of U shapes together.

Using a sharp blade or good pair of scissors, cut along the channel formed between the U shapes. Then, tie a string or thread (not yarn) through that same channel. Tie it tight!

Once you’re happy with the tightness of your knot, unclip the U shapes and gently pull them out of your pom-pom. Give your pom-pom a good fluffing by floofing it with your hands, or release some pent-up aggression by whacking it violently against a trashcan. Cut off any extraneous bits of yarn to make the roundest shape possible, and you’re done!

Use the string on the pom-pom to attach it to anything you like, or use it as a cat toy.

Brand Library Staff Reviews

There are many legends and heroes in American history whose stories and contributions have yet to be added to the pantheon of this country. The graphic novel series Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History is (so far!) two volumes and seventeen stories of extraordinary biographies from our early history. Most of the men and women featured were tragically unknown to me. I had no idea Richard Potter was considered the first popular American stage magician or that there’s an island off the coast of Maine (Malaga Island) that’s known as “The Shame” because of the cruel treatment of its inhabitants. I’d never read Jourdan Anderson’s searing letter to his former slavemaster or been enthralled by the legend of Bass Reeves (the real Lone Ranger!), deputy United States marshal in the 1800s. Joel Gill’s illustrations, icons, and words are delightful at times, moving at others, and frequently riveting as they describe people defying the circumstances that led to their historical erasure. The series is geared toward ages 12 & up, but will be entertaining for younger children or older adults. There are word definitions and additional historical context at the end of each volume.

Joel Gills continues the story of Bass Reeves in Tales of the Talented Tenth Vol. 1: Bass Reeves and adds the story of Bessie Stringfield, The Motorcycle Queen of Miami. Listen to an interview with Joel Gills on the podcast Why We Write for more context on the naming of his two series and his art. -SB




The Quintet-Jazz at Massey Hall, often called “The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever” is one of the most highly regarded recordings in the jazz canon, and a pinnacle of the bebop era of jazz. The performers are the superstars of the era, and some of the most inventive musicians in the history of jazz. All had been heavily influenced by Charlie Parker and were in their musical prime at the time. The concert was recorded at Toronto’s Massey Hall in 1953 by Charles Mingus, who also played bass on the recording. Dazzling musicianship was on display as the quintet soared through bebop classics and hard bop standards. Behind-the-scenes stories of the performance became legendary. The venerable Charlie Parker, who, due to a conflict with another record label, was listed as “Charlie Chan” on the album’s liner notes, performed on a white plastic alto, as he had recently pawned his regular saxophone. Pianist, Bud Powell, had just been released from a mental hospital, and was drunk by the start of the concert. Dizzy Gillespie repeatedly left the stage after his trumpet solos to check on the status of a heavyweight boxing championship being held in Chicago that evening and gave the audience updates on the match. There were even rumors of backstage infighting among the band members. Drummer Max Roach provided a steady presence throughout the concert, the only one in which these five major jazz pioneers ever played together as a group. Mandatory listening for any jazz fan. -PR

Joseph Schwantner: Velocities/ Percussion Concerto/ New Morning for the World: Daybreak of Freedom. Evelyn Glennie-percussion, Vernon E. Jordan Jr. – narrator, Leonard Slatkin conducting the National Symphony Orchestra (recorded 1996). In honor of Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday I thought it would be appropriate to highlight Joseph Schwantner’s New Morning for the World, a piece I have admired for some time. The work is for narrator and orchestra with texts from various speeches and letters by Dr. King. Schwantner’s music has a bright colorful sound. He uses percussion quite a bit and I often hear bright metallic instruments such as vibraphone, glockenspiel and crotales in his music. This is a 25 minute dramatic and engaging piece with lots of brass winds and percussion and it strikes me as very American sounding. The work was written in 1982 and premiered on Dr. King’s birthday January 15, 1983. The album starts with Velocities, a piece for solo marimba performed by the famous percussionist Evelyn Glennie. A fantastic performance and an engaging virtuoso piece that was written in 1990. Glennie is also soloist in the percussion concerto a wonderfully accessible piece in which the soloist plays twenty different percussion instruments. The concerto was written in 1994 and premiered in 1995. A very exciting album, conductor Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra are fantastic as always. My only complaint is that Naxos did not include a PDF of the booklet. -BW

 

Covid-19 Resources


Reliable information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) is available from the World Health Organization, the California Department of Public Health, the Los Angeles County Public Health Department, the City of Glendale, and the Library, Arts & Culture department.



 

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