Shepherd School of Music digitization project

Shepherd School rehearsal

As many of you know, in 2016 the Shepherd School of Music found analog audio and video recordings which had never been digitized. Fondren Library staff in Digital Scholarship Services, the Woodson Research Center, Cataloging and Metadata Services, Reference, and Access Services joined in a project to digitize thousands of past performances by the students and faculty of the Shepherd School. As of June 30th, 2022, the digitization of all content converted from analog formats (printed performance programs, cassette tapes, reel to reel tapes, and CDs) was completed and files were uploaded to the Rice Digital Scholarship archive.

Over 4,200 more audio performances, given from 1974 through 2015, are now available for users to stream. We acknowledge the generous support from Fondren Library, the Woodson Research Center, the Friends of Fondren Library, and the Rice Historical Society, which made this possible.

We hope you enjoy a little Debussy from a 2012 performance by Makiko Hirata, who received her Doctor of Musical Arts from the Shepherd School in 2012:

https://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/112572

MAKIKO HIRATA Piano PAINTING IN SOUND DEBUSSY VS. MUSSORGSKY Sunday, September 16, 2012 3:00 p.m. Lillian H. Duncan Recital Hall. The concert begins with Debussy’s Arabesque and Clair de lune.

May the 4th be with you

Today we celebrate Star Wars Day – May the 4th be with you! And in honor of the day you can find a recording of John Williams’ Jabba the Hutt theme from Return of the Jedi at the 10:50 minute mark on the recording here:

https://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/93555

Imagine this played by the Cantina band at Mos Eisley.

We’re also celebrating the Shepherd School of Music Digitization project, and the considerable progress accomplished in the last year. Staff from Digital Scholarship Services, the Woodson Research Center, Reference, and Cataloging and Metadata Services have contributed to the completion of the first pass of audio review of analog tapes for over 1,500 performances. As of the end of the year 2020, over 300 audio files (for performance years 2000 through 2003) have been uploaded to the Digital Scholarship Archive:

https://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/77130

Our amazing Digital Processing Archivist will continue to work on the project through the summer of 2021. We hope to have all the 1,500 performances uploaded to the institutional repository by the end of summer.

Shepherd School performances: Karim Sulayman

The Shepherd School of Music has brought us some extremely fine performers, including Karim Sulayman, a Grammy Award-winning tenor. You can hear his Master’s recital from 2001 here:

https://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/92885

KARIM SULAYMAN Tenor MASTER’S RECITAL Friday, February 16, 2001 6:00 p.m. Lillian H. Duncan Recital Hall.

The tenor sings a program of French repertoire by Fauré, Debussy, Massenet, and Poulenc, among others. My favorite piece in this concert is Poulenc’s lovely Les chemins de l’amour, which begins an hour and 5 minutes into the concert. After what was clearly a standing ovation by the audience, Sulayman performs an unidentified encore- extra points for anyone who can identify the piece for us.

Sulayman was awarded the 2018 Grammy for the Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for Songs Of Orpheus – Monteverdi, Caccini, D’India & Landi, recorded with Apollo’s Fire, a critically acclaimed period-instrument ensemble specializing in early music (Renaissance, Baroque and early Classical). (The award was given in 2019.)

To learn more about the artist, I recommend this interview and biographical sketch.

Many thanks to our team member Steven Loyd, digital processing archivist and graduate student in English literature, for recommending this performance.

Shepherd School performances

For those of you who follow and support the Shepherd School of Music-there is an ongoing project to digitize the thousands of past performances by the students and faculty of the Shepherd School. With the generous support of Fondren Library, the Friends of Fondren Library, and the Rice Historical Society, recordings in multiple obsolete formats have been digitized and are being added to the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive https://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/77130, along with scanned versions of programs and other documentation.

This post is the first in a series highlighting performances which were recently put online by our team. You can listen to this concert from 2003 here:

https://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/93686

CLASS OF 2003 CONVOCATION and PRESIDENTIAL CONCERT Friday, May 9, 2003 at Stude Concert Hall. This concert was in celebration of Rice University’s Ninetieth Commencement; it includes a wide variety of musicians, including the Shepherd School Chamber Orchestra, the Rice Brass Choir, vocalists, pianists, and the Attacca Winds Quintet. I recommend “Vilia” from The Merry Widow, about 24 minutes into the concert; it always makes me smile.

Woodson in News from Fondren

In case you haven’t seen it, there are quite a few articles about the Woodson’s various projects and collection in the most recent issue of News from Fondren. They include information on the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) archive, the Reginald Moore Convict Leasing research collection, the Shepherd School digitization project, the Houston Folk Music Archive’s Homecoming concert, and the Wilson Collection of Historical Cartography and Geography.

KTRU Tuesdays: John Cage

On April 12, 1983, the avant-garde composer John Cage sat down with an interviewer from KTRU. That very day he was giving a free concert of his own works with The Shepherd School of Music‘s SYZYGY, as well as reading his poetry.

In this interview, Cage discusses his diet, travelling, his educational background, being a tour guide, his current work, following Arnold Schoenberg, using chance when composing, and his current chance techniques.

If you recognize the interviewer, please let us know.

Image from: The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 70, No. 27, Ed. 1, Friday, April 8, 1983