The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

I recently had the pleasure of sitting in on Peter Apfelbaum’s oral history, conducted by long-time friend and jazz writer, Dan Ouellette. I was most pleased to hear about the origins of The Hieroglyphics – a band Peter formed in his teens. I am fascinated by how the band has successfully shifted and transformed alongside him - growing as he did throughout the years. There is a touch of sadness about this being my last opportunity to hear a Duke Jazz artist tell his story like this – laughing with a friend while articulating the first musical sounds he ever made, pausing to find the right words to describe his artistic process, or discussing the true impact of a commission from organizations like Chamber Music America.

Each time we enter the oral history studio, I am reminded of how invaluable we are as our own, best primary resources. I am reminded of the true power of our stories – and of the humanity we feel when we share in the telling of our experiences. I feel overwhelmed with gratefulness for having had the chance to sit in on, catalog, and provide access to these artist histories. Each one has affected me in ways I would only fail in trying to articulate. I hope you will join the Library in celebrating these fine resources. Utilize them! Bring friends!

In the meantime, we do hope you will join us on Friday, November 13th when we end our Duke Jazz Series with a 12-piece bang!

The November Duke Jazz Series concert features Peter Apfelbaum and The New York Hieroglyphics: Peck Allmond, Patrice Blanchard, Charles Burnham, Natalie Cressman, Abdoulaye Diabate, Viva DeConcini, Jessica Jones, Tony Jones, David Phelps, Dafnis Prieto and Josh Roseman.

Composer/multi-instrumentalist Peter Apfelbaum started playing drums at the age of three, taking up piano and saxophone in elementary school and forming his first band at age 11. In 1977 - his senior year at Berkeley High - he formed the 17-piece Hieroglyphics Ensemble as a vehicle for composing and exploring non-traditional musical forms; the Hieroglyphics Ensemble went on to perform with artists like Don Cherry and the Grateful Dead. Apfelbaum put the Hieroglyphics Ensemble on hold during the mid-90s, forming a sextet comprising Hieroglyphics musicians and acoustic bassist John Shifflett. In 1998, Apfelbaum moved to Brooklyn, where he soon formed a New York version of his Sextet. This group grew in 2003 to become the 11-piece New York Hieroglyphics and recorded It is Written in 2004. In addition to the New York Hieroglyphics, Apfelbaum continues to perform regularly with Steven Bernstein, Trey Anastasio, Dafnis Prieto, Josh Roseman, and Kamikaze Ground Crew.

The concert will be held on Friday, November 13, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. in the Bruno Walter Auditorium at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, 111 Amsterdam Avenue @ 65th Street. The program is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. For more information, please call 212.870.1793 or visit nypl.org/lpaprograms.

Please do stick around, say hello and share your Duke Jazz experiences at the public reception to follow! Thank you all for your continued support.

Katrina M. Dixon, Librarian
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Project

My last two blogs have been about images that inspired the exhibition, Vaudeville Nation, and ended up adorning its title. This one concerns an image that inspired the curatorial approach to the exhibition, but ended up almost hidden in the exhibition itself. That happens sometimes -- the curatorial/design team finds other ways to re-state the message from the artifact.

Recent popular entertainment historians have noted that the feature that distinguished vaudeville from other variety forms was its targeting of women audiences for afternoon performances. There were many reasons for this -- the most important being that urban women had discretionary income by the turn-of-the-20th century. Not much, perhaps, but enough for a weekly visit to the local vaudeville palace. Theater owners and vaudeville circuit managers understood that the expense of installing clean lobbies and lounges would be balanced by the extra income from multiple afternoon performances. By the 1920s boom in theater building, they commissioned fabulous lobbies, ladies' lounges, and children's play areas.

I found this image on the back cover of a Keith's circuit theater program, Boston, 1906. It is one of the clearest statements of the management advertising directly to women to attend the theater each week. They wanted a vaudeville habit, not an interest in a particular performer.

In order to emphasize the importance of targeting women in the gallery, we set up 3 cases of mannequins in day-time, street clothes with arrays of vaudeville programs. We also developed a section on theater interiors and hung enlargements that brought the visitor through the exterior, lobby, and stage house of typically ornate vaudeville and picture palaces.

Photo credit: Nick Ruechel

We're slowly approaching the end of the Duke Jazz Series performances, and we would love to have you join us on Wednesday, September 23, 2009, to welcome Brian Lynch and Spheres of Influence. The performance will take place in the Bruno Walter Auditorium at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, 111 Amsterdam Avenue @ 65th Street. The program is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. For more information, please call 212.870.1793 or visit nypl.org/lpaprograms.

Brian Lynch is a respected insider within both the hardcore bebop and Latin communities. He has developed his career as a trumpeter/composer and is comfortable negotiating the complexities of clave with Afro-Caribbean pioneer Eddie Palmieri as swinging through advanced harmony with bebop maestro Phil Woods. He's worked in recent years with Buena Vista Social Club alumnus Barbarito Torres, dance remixer Joe Clausell, and the members of the influential Latin alternative group Yerba Buena. He arranges for Japanese pop star Mika Nakashima and producer Shinichi Osawa, has written string charts for Phil Woods, and has played with such pop luminaries as Maxwell, Prince, and Sheila E. A 1997 recording called Spheres of Influence [Sharp Nine], which earned a 4-1/2 star Downbeat review, was Lynch's first project to reflect the panoramic range of interests that influence his working life as a musician. Lynch has continued to advance the Spheres of Influence concept, gathering around him a repertory company of top-shelf Pan-American oriented musicians.

Brian will be performing with the Spheres of Influence ensemble: Justin Brown, Zaccai Curtis, Boris Kozlov, and Pedro Martinez and Brian has recently invited tenor saxophone player, Alex Hoffman.

Since Alex Hoffman was recently added to the ensemble, I would like to take the moment to mention here. He is a native of Washington, D.C., who now lives in New York City. Since moving to New York in 2005, Alex has performed with such artists as the Jimmy Heath Big Band, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and Brian Lynch, at venues ranging from Lincoln Center to Smalls Jazz Club to the Blue Note to Birdland.

Our next program will be on November 12, with Peter Apfelbaum and New York Hieroglyphics.

Please join us on Wednesday, September 23, 2009, it will be a fun evening with enjoyable jazz music!

The Duke Jazz Series is part of the two-year Library for the Performing Arts’ project funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to present, document, and preserve jazz, contemporary dance, and theater performances and related oral histories.

Hope to see you there!

Sometimes you can find unusual items in unusual places. Alexander Waugh's new book "The House of Wittgenstein" brings the Wittgenstein family and their legacy to the forefront of attention. Apart from this publication, scholars can now investigate a little-known source in the Music Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

A few years ago we received a gift of the working and personal papers of the eminent music theorist and professor, Felix Salzer. Salzer (1904-1986) was a student of the noted music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935). The papers (call number JPB 07-1) contain not only Salzer's numerous analyses and writings, but also some of Schenker's unpublished analyses. It's an archival collection that contains a wealth of information for students of music theory and music history.

But that's not all. Salzer was a grandson of the famous industrialist Karl Wittgenstein (Salzer's mother was Wittgenstein's daughter Helene). As such, he was intimately connected to other relatives, including philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and pianist Paul Wittgenstein. (The Music Division has long had several music manuscripts that once belonged to Paul Wittgenstein, including a handful of works composed by Johannes Brahms.)

Among the items in the Felix Salzer Papers are 3 bound books of photocopies of correspondence, dated 1913-1922, to and from various Wittgenstein relatives. (The originals are in the Österreischische Nationalbibliothek).

Additionally, during the height of World War II, Hermine Wittgenstein (1874-1950) wrote a family history and memoir for her family, Familienerinnerungen ("Family Recollections"; an image of the title page heads this blog post). Her signature is in the front, dated June 1944 (a few additional pages at the end are dated 1948 and 1949). As this memoir was intended only for family, very few institutions have access to it.

This cache of Wittgenstein materials (Salzer himself called them "Wittgensteiniana") is a reminder to always be on the lookout for unusual items within archival collections. You may not realize the treasures that can be found!

Double bassist Ben Allison has emerged as one of the rising stars of jazz in the last decade. He has performed all over the world with musicians ranging from saxophonist Lee Konitz to legendary performance artist Joey Arias. He has appeared on over 25 albums by various artists and has written music for film, national television and radio, including the theme for the National Public Radio (NPR) show "On the Media" and the score for Two Days, a play written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Donald Margulies. Allison’s most recent album, Little Things Run the World, reached #1 on the CMJ National Jazz radio charts and remained in the top 20 for over four months.

Allison, along with his group, Medicine Wheel, will be playing here at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts as part of the Duke Jazz Series on Friday, May 1, at 7:30. They will be performing selections from their Chamber Music America-commissioned album, Peace Pipe.

The Duke Jazz Series is part of the two-year Library for the Performing Arts’ project funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to present, document, and preserve jazz, contemporary dance, and theater performances and related oral histories. One of the goals of the NYPL’s Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Project is to draw attention to talented performing artists who may still be somewhat under the radar in terms their holdings at the Library. Right now, Ben Allison’s clipping file, a limited number of sound recordings and tap dance performance tapes for which he was a contributor, and one CD of his compositions may be found in our collections. We want to change that! As part of our Duke Jazz Series endeavors, we will soon be able to present not only Ben Allison in person, free of charge, to our May 1 audience (which we hope will include you!), but also Ben’s commercial recording of Peace Pipe, DVD and CD versions of the Ben Allison/Medicine Wheel live performance, and an audiorecorded oral history with Ben Allison, in which he will discuss his career with jazz journalist David Adler.

The Ben Allison/Medicine Wheel concert is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. It will be held at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, 111 Amsterdam Avenue @ 65th Street. For more information, please call 212.870.1793 or visit nypl.org/lpaprograms.

And finally, for a taste of Ben’s work: Ben's group, Man Size Safe, performing "Respiration"