Please join Moderator Steven Nelson and panelists Safiya Umeja Noble,
Hannibal B. Johnson, Esq., and Gary Keyes for a City of Glendale Community Conversation
Panel on Racism: Past & Present
Thursday, July 30, 2020 • 6:30 P.M. PST.
Please join us virtually via Webex here Submit questions for the panelists to: myglendale@glendaleca.gov
Music Playlists
Today's recommending listening is a new album by Black Eyed Peas, Pacifica Quartet, jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli, and flutists Viviana Guzman and Mark Takata. Log in with your Glendale library card to listen!
Get a free Glendale Library, Arts & Culture Library eCard instantaneously. It can be used to access our online resources including eBooks, eAudiobooks, eNewspapers, eMagazines, online classes, online tutoring, and learning games, as well as streaming movies and music, and more.Try listening to a streaming Playlist from Freegal Music, Naxos Music Library, Naxos Jazz Music Library, Hoopla or Alexander Street free with your library card. Alexander Street will ask for an academic institution, use Glendale Public Library.
Learn About Music
Tsound Kids is a Toronto Symphony Orchestra Kids YouTube site that has musical activities for the whole family.
Read Music
Marcia Davenport (1903-1996) was a well known author and music critic. Her biography of Mozart (1932) was the first published American biography of the composer. In honor of National Culinary Arts month, here is a link to her September 14, 1941 LA Times article including three of her favorite recipes.
Streaming Music
On May 8, 2014, filmmaker Dailey Pike screened his film honoring jazz guitar legend Joe Pass titled A Not So Average Joe at Brand Library. The film is a documentary of the making of the tribute album For Joe, made for the 20th anniversary of Joe’s passing. After the performance, Frank Potenza— a friend and protege of Joe— performed. Frank, a world renowned jazz guitar player in his own right, teaches at USC. Here is Frank’s fantastic concert from that evening titled Frank Potenza Live @ Miradero. This concert also honors Leslie Brand and includes songs that Leslie and Mary Louise may have heard at their parties at Miradero (now Brand LIbrary & Art Center).
Learn About Art
Pixar in a Box is a behind-the-scenes look at how Pixar artists do their jobs. You can animate bouncing balls, build a swarm of robots, and make virtual fireworks explode. The subjects you learn in school — math, science, computer science, and humanities — are used every day to create amazing movies at Pixar.
How artists capture environments. Art may be found in museums, but it almost never begins there. Discover some of the different ways that artists represent place and use materials from their environment. This 2015 modern art educational short from New York City’s Museum of Modern Art introduces how place and space influenced Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night, Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, and Gordon Matta-Clark’s Bingo.
Art Online
Join 11:11 A Creative Collective for a free virtual artwalk beginning at 11am on Saturday, July 25th. Featuring music, dance, spoken word, film, visual art displays and performances highlighted throughout 10 virtual locations within the Downtown Historic Canoga Park corridor.
Art Inspiration - Try It at Home
Check out MoMA PS1’s ongoing series of interviews with chef Mina Stone. A window into artists’ work ethos and personal lives through a simple recipe, such as Maia Ruth Lee’s Miyeokguk, Dara Friedman's “Perfectly Whatever” Chicken Soup, Lyle Ashton Harris' Greens, Anicka Yi's Lemon Pasta and Hugh Hayden's Cornbread.
Famous artists share the dishes that are getting them through lockdown on artnet. Try out recipes from Dan Colen, Gina Beavers, Lexie Smith, Kader Attia, Dana Sherwood, Olafur Eliasson, Nikki Maloof, Martha Rosler, DeVonn Francis and more.
Staff e-Recommendations
Amadeo & Maladeo: A Musical Duet. R.O. Blechman’s charming and affecting graphic novel tells the story of two late-eighteenth century musicians, born with the same gifts but into very different circumstances, and how those circumstances shape them in surprising ways. Loosely inspired by the life of Mozart, Amadeo and Maladeo are the legitimate and illegitimate sons of the same famous violin teacher, and while Amadeo leads a life of privilege and is hailed as a child prodigy, Maladeo is born to an unmarried servant girl and deals with one disaster after another. The novel’s “less-is-more” approach serves the story perfectly, telling it with a combination of stark text and simple pictures; the amount of negative space on the page encourages the reader to see beyond the narrative and think about its message. A beautiful rumination on how music saves us, this deceptively simple story can be read on many levels, and there are plenty of inside jokes for those in the know. For those who would like to be in the know, a good place to start is Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson, available as an audiobook via RB Digital. Amadeo and Maladeo is available on Hoopla. -LD
The last couple months have not helped with my travel daydreams. Danny Gregory’s An Illustrated Journey: Inspiration From the Private Art Journals of Traveling Artists, Illustrators and Designers offers a more intimate look than travel photography. It features the sketchbooks of 44 artists who draw out their travels and share with the readers why and how (techniques, tools, etc). I find artist sketchbooks so much more intimate and engaging than more refined work, when we’re all supposed to bask in the greatness of art. I prefer scribbles and wobbly lines and barely legible notes. The watercolors some of these artists showcase in the book are astounding. Robert Avidor's a sketch of a watercolor blue-gray sky behind a worn-out cityscape had me staring at my screen in awe. The artists also rattled off some wisdom I found useful not just when it comes to sketching. Chris Buchholz: If I have a page that I really don’t like, I just keep drawing until I like it. Virginia Hein: If the sketchbook becomes too precious to experiment in, then it’s not a good sketchbook. And Robert Avidor: I tell people not to worry about making mistakes: most people won’t see the mistake. Sometimes mistakes become a different way of drawing something. I would absolutely recommend this book to those of us out there who want to see fixed landscapes and architecture with a more fresh and personal perspective. There’s such a humanity in the approaches and art in these sketchbooks, it makes me yearn for outside so much more. -GG
Ockeghem: Missa Prolationum; Edward Wickham directing the Clerks' Group. The Missa Prolationum (ca 1465) is one of my favorite pieces of Renaissance music. It’s calmness and otherworldly beauty might be helpful in these trying times. The composer Johannes Ockeghem (c 1410-1497) is one of the greatest masters of counterpoint before Bach. You can read much about the technical technical details of this piece online in journals, and in books. However, if you are not a musician don’t let it deter you, just get swept up in the sheer beauty of the piece. He uses canons at different intervals and speeds in a masterful web of sound that has rarely been equaled in music history. As a musician, I don’t even listen for those technical details when I hear this piece (many are subtle and very difficult to detect); I just enjoy the music. The Clerks' Group directed by Edward Wickham is fantastic. The 5 motets are masterful too but the main point of focus is the mass. -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.
Resources for Music Businesses And Industry Workers, Playing for Change, Sounding Point LA
Resources for Freelance Artists, California Arts Council, Americans for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts
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