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!
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.
Today's recommending listening includes the soundtrack from The Mandalorian, K-pop band GOT7, American folk and blues singer Lead Belly, and contemporary jazz by Kari Ikonen.
Learn About Music
Opera Explained series is narrated by British actor David Timson and is available from Naxos Music Library. The series includes booklets and spoken word explanation of warhorses such as Cavalleria rusticana, The Marriage of Figaro, Carmen, Madama Butterfly and many more. There are 29 operas in the series total.
There are hundreds of music eBooks on Freading and Cloud Library. Login with your Glendale library card number. Biographies, music instruction, theory and much more.
Music Movies
There are a lot of movies relating to music on Hoopla. Login with your library card to start streaming. Included are musicals such as Les Miserables, documentaries such as Give Me the Banjo, and concerts such as the B-52s.
Learn Ukulele
Peter Luongo is a well known ukulele teacher and teaches a free beginning ukulele webinar sponsored by the NAMM Foundation. The webinar is an excellent crash course in learning the ukulele and you will learn “In the Jungle (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)” by the end of the video. He gives a few basic singing tips too.
Art Online
Explore an online exhibit from the Smart Museum, Take Care. What does it mean to care for something, someone, or ourselves? Caring can be a form of affection, a survival strategy, a political tool, a mode of labor, and a means of sustenance. Whether an accumulation of small gestures, a singular bold act, or even strategic indifference, expressions of care - or the lack thereof - shape the world in which we live.
Explore the fifth iteration of the Hammer Museum’s biennial, Made in L.A. 2020: a version, with works by 30 Los Angeles-based artists in two locations, the Hammer and The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, as well as spaces in between. Watch curators Myriam Ben Salah, Lauren Mackler, and Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi offer an overview of the two mirrored “versions” of the exhibition installed in two venues.
Since 1987, David Zinn has been drawing chalk-and-charcoal creatures in site-specific works that wash away with the rain. Drain pipes become robotic dogs, a pillar morphs into a giant pencil, and a green monster pops out of a brick walkway. A new short film Around the Block, directed by Jonnie Lewis dives into Zinn’s practice by animating his signature cartoon cast that greets the artist as he walks around the city.
Couriers of Hope features 80 artists and over 160 pieces of art transforming envelopes into pieces expressing and exploring the emotion of hope, pointing out the beauty all around us in simple things and quiet observations. Despite upended routines and extended isolation, art has the power to tie us to others and show us our collective humanity. For virtual viewing through February 28, 2021.
Try It at Home
Get inspired by Vassily Kandinsky from the Norton Simon. Experiment with overlapping shapes by tracing objects from around your home that remind you of a friend or loved one, and then create a decorative card for this special person.
Want to use up some scrap fabric? Try out fabric collage greeting cards from the Carle Museum.
If you want to go a step further, make a journal or scrap book to collect mementos and memories with The Booklyn Education Manual compiled by The Booklyn Artists Alliance. Create a blank book first and later fill it in, suggestions for different class assignments are included encouraging creativity and collaboration. Directions on making booklets with coptic stitch, pamphlet stitch, stab binding, flag books, accordion or concertina books, and one sheet books are all included.
Brand Library Staff Reviews
The Art of Ukulele by Ralph Shaw. A down-to-earth, insightful and funny compendium of ukulele knowledge and lore, The Art of Ukulele is a must-read for anybody setting out on a ukulele journey. In this book, which is part instruction manual and part memoir, long-time ukulele entertainer and recording artist Ralph Shaw guides the reader through all the important facets of being a ukulele performer, tackling such diverse topics as how to write good songs (Don’t accept the first draft and keep going until you know it’s finished) and how to figure out what PA system to purchase (More expensive is not necessarily better, and for heaven's sake, don't rely on the gig site to have what you need). He gives practical and humorous advice about how to develop your stage image, how to sing, how to properly take breaks, how to stop “goal-setting” (Step One, recognize the concept is flawed and stop doing it) and how to find joy onstage and give joy to others, which is the main purpose of playing a ukulele anyway. Excellent YouTube ukulele tutorials are abundant, and inexpensive ukuleles can be found all over the place, including online. If you’re looking to try your hand at a sunny, easily portable, chordal instrument that all but begs people to get involved and sing, clap, or strum along, the ukulele is a fantastic choice, and you should let Ralph’s book be your guide. He knows what he’s talking about. -LD
John Adams: My Father Knew Charles Ives/ Harmonielehre. Giancarlo Guerrero conducting the Nashville Symphony Orchestra (released Jan 1, 2021). On this album there are two very different pieces by composer John Adams (b. 1947) from two very different times in his career. My Father Knew Charles Ives was written for the San Francisco Symphony in 2003 and is a homage to Ives (1874-1954). The influence of Ives pieces such as The Unanswered Question, The Concord Sonata and the Fourth of July are clearly there. Of course it is also still Adams, written through a historic lens and has quite a bit of Adams’ warmth and nostalgia.
Harmonielehre was written in 1984-1985 and is both a piece that uses both contemporary minimalism in the outer movements and is also reminiscent of a 19th century symphony in it’s dramatic scope. He has called it "a statement of belief in the power of tonality at a time when I was uncertain about its future." It was his first large scale symphonic work and has been performed quite often. Adams is one of the most widely performed living composers and these are both major pieces at 27 and 41 minutes long. You will hear the Harmonielehre as a piece with minimalist elements and My Father Knew Charles Ives as the direction he took later. -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