Brand from Home | November 04, 2021

Glendale Library, Arts & Culture is starting an initiative to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake in our city by recruiting and training community members to become Vaccine Influencers with the tools to effectively build vaccine confidence with their family, friends, and coworkers. Trainings will be conducted virtually in English, Spanish, or Armenian. Learn more about the program here and join us in working to end the COVID-19 pandemic!

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.

Here are some great streaming recordings to celebrate Native American Heritage Month.

Here are some new and old blues artists on CDs we recently received.

Music DVDs

What instrument do you want to learn to play? We have many instructional DVDs to help.

Historic Recordings Online

UCSB Cylinder Archive. Wax cylinder recordings were popular in the late 1800s to the early 1900s and one of the earliest types of recordings. UC Santa Barbara has a collection of 10,000 of these cylinders which they have been digitizing and making available on their web site.

Art Exhibitions

Women Painters West - A Century of California Women Artists. Commemorating the heritage, challenges and accomplishments of members of Women Painters West for the last 100 years. The exhibition features 100 new, contemporary works as well as showcasing 25 original paintings on loan. On view Saturday, November 13, 2021 - January 8, 2022 at Brand Library & Art Center.

When I Remember I See Red: American Indian Art and Activism in California at the Autry. Featuring Native California artists who use their work as a means of cultural resistance and renewal. Many have helped restore aspects of ceremony, dance, language, and material culture in danger of disappearing. On view through Sunday, November 14. Watch a video or check out the exhibition catalog from the library.

Art Exhibitions Online

The National Museum of the American Indian has several online exhibitions. Get started with Indelible: The Platinum Photographs of Larry McNeil and Will Wilson and Circle of Dance. Explore their educational resources to present the history more accurately and with Native perspectives, and browse their collections.

The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture produces online exhibitions illustrating themes and ideas related to Native American material culture try Turquoise, Water, Sky and Touched by Fire to start. Some online exhibitions complement the exhibitions on view in the galleries, others are created specifically for the Web. Take a virtual tour of their collections and learn more. They also have podcasts and a YouTube channel.

Art of Native America on view at the Met. More than fifty Indigenous groups are represented, including: painting, drawing, sculpture, textiles, quill and bead embroidery, basketry, and ceramics. See exhibition artworks online. Listen to vibrant expressions of Native sovereignty, identity, and connections to community and family.

California Indians: The First People, listen to the unique contributions of California’s Native Peoples in their own voice from the California Museum's exhibit.

Checkout some art books from the library.

Can't find it at the library? Try out Link+ our network of 70 public and academic libraries from across California and Nevada. Just click on the link from the catalog or watch a tutorial to learn more.

Brand Library Staff Reviews

Matthew Specktor’s memoir Always Crashing in the Same Car opens with a particularly difficult period in the Hollywood screenwriter’s life—middle age, little available work, a looming divorce, and a bachelor apartment in West Hollywood too small for his young daughter—a scenario so common it’s cliche. Rather than simply rehash those events and his childhood in Los Angeles circa the ‘60s and ‘70s, Specktor chooses a more engaging route. He examines the career failures of the writers, screenwriters, actors, directors, and musicians who have influenced his life to understand his own halting career and his mother’s failed screenwriting attempts and addiction before her untimely death. Everyone he examines found some notion of “success” in their industries but due to various factors (sexism, racism, addiction, marketability, temperament) crashed. This includes widely known personalities like F. Scott Fitzgerald, but also Thomas McGuane, Carole Eastman, Eleanor Perry, Charles Burnett, Hal Ashby, and Warren Zevon. Always Crashing in the Same Car is a great read for anyone who appreciates film and literature, especially of the slightly more off-beat variety. It’s not easy to explain why a book about failure is really hard to put down, but perhaps that’s because there’s more relatability in it—it truly is the ubiquitous Hollywood ending. If you've read the book and want to want to know more about the articles, books, films, and music referenced, I've created a this handy list in Bibilocommons. -SB

Handel, G.F.: Water Music: Suites Nos. 1-3 / Music for the Royal Fireworks (Le Concert des Nations, Savall). Catalonian conductor Jordi Savall is one of the foremost experts on performing early music. It seemed logical at some point that he would record two of the most popular works of George Frederic Handel (1685-1759). Notably in 2009, Savall received the Handel Prize from Halle, Germany - the city where Handel was born. The Water Music was composed in 1717 at the request of King George I for a concert on the River Thames. Music for the Royal Fireworks was composed in 1749 at the request of King George II for a concert in London to celebrate the end of the War of the Austrian Succession. Both are colorful works with lots of winds and percussion and are appropriate to be performed outdoors. Savall’s group also includes period instruments to get the sound as close as possible to the way Handel would have heard the music. This performance is from 1993 and was recorded in the medieval Cardona Castle in Catalonia giving the recording a lush reverberant sound. There are many wonderful competing recordings of these two pieces on original or modern instruments. Savall’s performance is warm and rich with fast exciting tempos and is well worth listening to. -BW