Making the Arts More Dementia Friendly (Alzheimer's Society advises)

For anyone involved in arts management or community music, this will be really helpful:-

Becoming a dementia friendly arts venue: A practical guide

Bach Complete Organ Music Audio File to Download

Organists will like this:- The Big Bach Download

(It does what is says on the cover!)

On Acting: Anna Madeley exclusive talk uploaded to Digital Theatre Plus

"I play Elizabeth Proctor [in The Crucible].  I think the thing that really struck me was her ability to see what was going around her and her ability to look inside of herself. Those were the things that first struck me about her and I think she is at the heart of it.."

Staff and students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland can view this exclusive interview, and read a full transcript, via our subscription to Digital Theatre Plus.  CLICK HERE.

East-West, Public-Academic Music Library Collaboration

Karen gave a bicentennial talk about the First Edinburgh Musical Festival, at Edinburgh Central Library last month. The commemoration was a collaboration between the Central Library, Karen from the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and Almut Boehme of the National Library of Scotland.

You can read a report in the IAML (UK and Ireland) Newsletter, on pages 21-22, 35-36 - HERE.

IAML is the International Association of Music Libraries.

National identity in terms of traditional songs?

Here's an article about notions of American identity.  It's by Delaina Sepko :- 

• 'The Archive of American Folk Song, the Library of Congress Recording Laboratory and Notions of American Identity' 

 The article was published in Fontes, April/June 2015.  You can read the whole paper online HERE.

Advent Calendar from Norway

The Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound has released their annual advent calendar.  You can take a look HERE. 

Cool Cats Do Research Online (Whittaker Library can help)

If you are in your second or third year studying BMus, or third year BEd, at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, you've probably got assignments due at the end of the week.

Need help with your assignment?

Sadly, we can't write it for you!  However, there's plenty of help from the Library if you're frankly a bit short on content for your assignment. Come to the Library to consult us, or take a look at our e-resources.
All these possibilities (and more) are yours at the click of a button, via the library website:-

• OxfordMusicOnline
• Jstor (back copies of music journals online)
• E-books in the library catalogue
• Our e-Books page offers more bulk collections from different publishers
• Streamed music (Naxos and Alexander Street Press)
• Classical scores library - maybe you could source quotes for your essay here?
• Individual e-journals - try Eighteenth Century Music for your assignment about Bach and rhetoric, for example.

There are various pages you can look at from the library website. Use your usual login if you're off-site. Take a look, visit us, or try LibraryChat on the catalogue homepage during library opening hours. 

We are the exceptionally helpful Whittaker Library, here to help our performing arts community with their library and information needs.

Be a Portfolio Musician (like Bach), argues Sean Gregory

Earlier this week, the Guardian Cultural Network featured a piece by Sean Gregory, Director of Creative Learning at the Barbican and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Since many of Whittaker Live's readers are training to be portfolio musicians themselves, we thought we'd share the posting.  Here's the link to Sean Gregory's piece.

• Whittaker Library books on music careers can be found here.

How Many Fiddlers Make a Scots Fiddle Fest?

Queen's Hall and Summerhall, Edinburgh 

20-22 November 2015

This weekend sees the Scots Fiddle Festival take place in Edinburgh.  How many fiddlers?  We can't begin to guess! Full details and programme on the Fiddle 2105 website, here:-

http://www.scotsfiddlefestival.com/fiddle2015/
Twitter: @Scotsfiddlefest

Are you going?

Do You Teach Acting? Or Theatre Studies?

Staff and students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland can make use of one of our electronic resources, Digital Theatre Plus, to find a Henrik Ibsen Teacher Kit, with loads of useful resources.

If you're a registered student or member of staff at RCS, please use your usual login to access this valuable material.  Here's the link.  (If you're off-campus, you will have to log in.  If you're in the building, you'll get direct access.)

"We continue our Henrik Ibsen season with our themed transcripts on performing, directing and interpeting Ibsen.
"Next week brings us the second of Ibsen's great heroines with Nora from A Doll's House, as played by the award-winning Hattie Morahan."

• Digital Theatre Plus - you won't know what you're missing till you visit it! https://www.digitaltheatreplus.com/

Concerned about Accessibility in Theatre? Read Guardian Culture Professionals today

This posting from Guardian Culture Professionals Network might be of interest to you. Click HERE.

(There is also a piece about a career in poetry, which you might enjoy.)

Conservatoire Actors: hear Anna Madeley on Acting

We're justifiably proud of our subscription to Digital Theatre Plus.  Today, we share another great interview uploaded to the service.  Staff and students of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland can log on to view Anna Madeley's interview, using their usual RCS login.

Anna Madeley played Elizabeth Proctor in Yaël Farber's acclaimed production of The Crucible at The Old Vic.
Anna describes how integrity is essential to her character, the role Mary Warren plays in her secluded life, and the rehearsal exercises used to build intimacy between John and Elizabeth in performance.
On Acting: Anna Madeley - Full Transcript (PDF 181.52 KB)

Top Screenwriting Tips via Guardian Culture Professionals

Of course, you've signed up to the Guardian Culture Professionals?  Their online pages have loads of useful suggestions and news items for performing artists.

Here are Tips for Screenwriters, posted earlier this week: "Screenwriters share their top tips for career success"

• http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network

Exciting! Mahler Manuscripts Online from Ontario

Our professional association, the International Association of Music Libraries, shared this interesting news with us earlier this week.  Considering very few musicians ever get the chance to view original Mahler manuscripts 'in the flesh', the chance to see five manuscripts digitized online is a very exciting proposition indeed.

(And what's more - the Director of Talbot College's Music Library at Western University, Ontario, is an alumnus of the RCS, or RSAMD as it was called back then.  Brian McMillan graduated as Master of Opera in 1995)!


Quoting the newsflash:-

The Music Library of Western University (London, Ontario, Canada) is pleased to announce the arrival online of 5 music manuscripts from the Gustav Mahler-Alfred Rosé Collection: https://archive.org/details/mahlerrose. These 5 manuscripts, in Mahler's hand or annotated by Mahler, include:

• some of the earliest songs composed by Mahler (5 [sic: 3] Lieder Josephinen zueignet)

• the first movement, scherzo, and finale of the earliest extant score of Mahler's 1st Symphony.  (This was analyzed in Stephen McClatchie's 1996 article "The 1889 Version of Mahler's First Symphony: A New Manuscript Source" (19th-Century Music 20, no. 2 (1996): 99-124).

More information about the Gustav Mahler-Alfred Rosé Collection may be found at the Music Library's website: http://www.lib.uwo.ca/music/gmar.html.

Western Libraries, Western's Cultureplex, and the Internet Archive are acknowledged for their assistance in making these manuscripts accessible online.

More information from:-
Brian McMillan
Director, Music Library
Western University
Talbot College, Rm. 234
1151 Richmond Street
London, Ontario, CANADA N6A 3K7
Email: bmcmill2 "at" uwo.ca

Birthday Greetings to Adolphe Sax - 201 Today

Last year was the Big Birthday, of course.  The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland lent a horn made by Sax, to the Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels to celebrate Sax200.  But today Adolphe Sax would have been 201!

Here's our Sax Horn (as opposed to his saxhorn, which is a different beast entirely!).  Find out more about our musical instrument collection by contacting our Archives Officer.

• https://www.rcs.ac.uk/about_us/libraryandit/archives/

Edinburgh Competition Festival Association

We hear there is interest amongst our students in this performance competition opportunity, so we're sharing the website with you:-

Edinburgh Competition Festival Association