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 rapper Megan Thee Stallion, Beethoven's piano sonatas, jazz and prog rock guitarist Allan Holdsworth, and Foo Fighters.
Sea Shanties have been a recent trend on TikTok. Here are some albums for inspiration you can listen to on Music Online: Sea Songs & Shanties, Blow the Man Down, Steady as She Goes, and Classic Maritime Music.
Read this article about sea shanties with videos on Billboard and check out these books that are available as PDFs; Ships, Sea Songs and Shanties (1912) and Sea Chanteys and Sailors’ Songs (2000, Kendall Whaling Museum). Join the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City for a free monthly online chantey sing-along!
Learn About Music
The Naxos Discover Series includes albums by time period (Baroque, Romantic etc) or instrumentation (The Symphony, Choral Music etc). The series includes large PDF booklets giving background to someone new to the format.
IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library has music theory and orchestration texts available online if you want to improve your knowledge. Most are public domain and many are in English. Texts by Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz and others are available.
Read Music
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 265 birthday was on January 27. Bärenreiter-Verlag has made the complete Mozart works available online for free. Happy Birthday Mozart and thank you Bärenreiter!
Streaming Music
Have you checked out NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts recently? Punk band PUP, banjo player Nora Brown, R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan and others have recently performed on the series.
Art Online
Three neon pink seesaws slotted through the U.S.- Mexico border were named the 2020 Beazley Design of the Year. Conceived by Oakland - based artists Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, the project was installed between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez to connect the two communities despite the 20-foot barrier. Explore all the top designs through the museum’s virtual exhibition that runs until March 28.
Explore Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring with an interactive 10 billion pixel panorama. Last year, researchers Emilien Leonhardt and Vincent Sabatier, of Hirox Europe, released records from nearly two years of analysis of the artwork revealing that the gray backdrop is actually a dark green curtain and that the figure has eyelashes only visible with magnification. Head over to explore in 2-D and 3-D, and watch the video for more about the technical aspects of their work.
Fashion
Tour About Time, from The MET Museum's Costume Institute, tracing a century and a half of fashion - from 1870 to the present - along a disruptive timeline. Virginia Woolf serves as the "ghost narrator" of the exhibition. Browse the Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects representing seven centuries of fashion and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present. Watch videos about the Institute - lectures, interviews, previews, and more.
Explore the collections of the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising Museum. Browse the Museum Collection and Study Collection along with exhibitions on their Google Arts & Culture platform.
Learn more about dance costume design from the Victoria & Albert Museum. Dance costume is a highly specialized field reflecting the overall concept of the work, body movement, the demands of the choreography and the effects of different fabrics in motion all taken into consideration. Search the Costume Collection for more on ethical fashion, 1960s fashions, and resources for using the collections to make things.
Dance
Films.Dance engages more than 150 artists from 52 cities in 25 countries, culminating in 15 short films that have been shot over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each Monday Jan 25 - May 3, 2021, one film will premiere for free.
Check out the new campaign by the Swedish nonprofit Generation Pep with nine-year-old Lilyana Ilunga. Set to a revamped version of a 2007 track by French EDM musicians Justice, DANCE 10,000 showcases the young prodigy, who flaunts her moves from the second she wakes up. Follow tutorials to guide kids through the intensely choreographed routine.
Brand Library Staff Reviews
After WWII, the French critic Nino Frank noticed a shift in American cinema - decidedly darker in lighting, theme, and tone than the films of the previous decade - and dubbed it “film noir.” Film Noir Style examines the costumes and costume designers who helped create this darker vision in the 1940s. Author Kimberly Turner puts the genre into historical context by briefly writing about its roots (in crime film, German Expressionism, and patriarchal neurosis) and then dividing the twenty films she covers into four sections: pre-war, the war years, a transition period, and post-war. There are, of course, the tailored suits, trench coats, and fedoras we all know and love, but there’s so much more! War-time fabric shortages, rationing, and the strict Production Code played a huge role in the streamlined silhouettes of our favorite characters. Every “femme fatale” gets her own treatment from Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon to Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, as do costumers like Orry-Kelly, Bonnie Cashin, and Irene. When the war was over, Christian Dior’s Corelle (or “New Look”) collection led to the more luxurious feminine clothing we associate with the 1950s and the death of film noir. Film Noir Style is a treat for anyone who loves these films and can’t wait to re-watch Gilda or Notorious for the umpteenth time.
Our digital services have several films noir not covered in the book, I recommend The Red House, Scarlet Street, and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. -SB
Give Me the Banjo (2011 film). This entertaining and informative film covers the banjo from its origins in West Africa to the present. One cannot present an accurate history of the banjo without discussing slavery and racism and the film discusses these topics. Minstrel shows were an extremely popular form of entertainment in the nineteenth century and helped spread the popularity of the instrument. Fancy banjos were created to appeal to the white middle class and the instrument was popular on both sides during the Civil War. In the twentieth century, important players such as Charlie Poole, Earl Scruggs, Pete Seeger and Bill Keith are featured and also contemporary players such as Bela Fleck, Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons and Noam Pikelny. As an added treat, Steve Martin narrates and shows his own playing skills with the Steep Canyon Rangers. Give Me the Banjo introduces a uniquely American instrument that should make people excited to explore recordings and information. Also check out this article from NPR discussing the banjo’s history, including the banjos African roots. -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