[78-L] ARSC Grants 2016: Recipients

[Bill Klinger]

The Outreach Committee of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections
(ARSC) posts the following message.

---- 2016 ARSC GRANTS RECIPIENTS ----

--- GRANTS for PRESERVATION of CLASSICAL MUSIC HISTORICAL RECORDINGS ---

The ARSC Preservation Grants Committee is pleased to announce the recipients
of the Grants for Preservation of Classical Music Historical Recordings. The
program for this grant was founded in 2004 by Al Schlachtmeyer and the ARSC
Board of Directors, to encourage and support the preservation of
historically significant sound recordings of Western Art Music by
individuals and organizations.

-- Interlochen Public Radio --
Interlochen Public Radio received a $9000 grant to hire an archival intern
to assist with a project to digitize open-reel recordings of performances at
the Interlochen Academy of the Arts. The tapes, recorded between 1954 and
1991, include performances by Van Cliburn, Claudette Sorel, William
Doppmann, and Janos Starker. Frederick Fennell and Howard Hanson are among
the conductors of the performances. The recordings include at least two
American premieres of note: Bartok's "The Wooden Prince" and Sibelius' "The
Captive Queen, Opus 48." The digital recordings made from the tapes will be
available for broadcast over Interlochen Public Radio. They will also be
available to the public via streaming, as copyright permits.
 
-- Professor Jordi Roquer Gonzalez --
Piano rolls are an early and popular form of recording technology. To
support the playback and recording of piano rolls cut by Catalan composers
Federico Mompou and Manuel Blancafort between 1914 and 1929, Professor Jordi
Roquer Gonzalez, of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain, received a
$2300 grant. Professor Roquer Gonzalez will use the grant to hire a
pianolist and a recording engineer to produce recordings of the rolls, which
will eventually be available on the Internet.

For more information about the Grants for Preservation of Classical Music
Historical Recordings, visit:
http://www.arsc-audio.org/committees/preservationgrants.html

The deadline for receipt of applications for the next grant cycle is
December 15, 2016.


--- RESEARCH GRANTS ---

The ARSC Research Grants Program supports scholarship and publication in the
fields of sound recording research and audio preservation. This year's
projects include three studies of the recording industry, each with a
slightly different focus.

-- Ian Eagleson --
Ian Eagleson, an ethnomusicologist and independent scholar, received a $1000
grant for travel to study the recording industry in Kenya. He will do
historical research on Kenyan popular music and the recording industry
during the middle to late twentieth century. Eagleson will conduct oral
history interviews and discographic research with musicians/producers who
came to the forefront of this activity during the 1960s, including Gabriel
Omolo, David Amunga, and John Nzenze.  This project will supplement
preparation of a book manuscript, "Ok Oyot System: Benga and the Kenyan
Recording Industry from 1950-2015," which documents guitar-based benga music
and the history of Kenyan recording practices.  In addition, Eagleson will
visit the British Library Sound Archive to examine the work of Alice Werner,
who recorded Kenyan songs and language in 1912, on wax cylinders.  

-- Filip Sir --
Filip Sir, librarian and sound specialist at the Moravian Library in Prague,
Czech Republic, received $1000 for travel to U.S. repositories to collect
information on recordings made for Czech immigrants to the U.S. The main
purpose of this research project is to examine and describe the production
of sound recordings for Czech-speaking immigrants in the U.S. during the
first half of the 20th century. He plans to visit the University of Chicago,
University of Wisconsin, and the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The results of this research will help to create a
publication that includes: a discography of Czech records for immigrants in
the U.S.; stories of the Czech countrymen in the U.S. who made them; and
pictures of record labels. A short article focusing on this research will be
published in the ARSC Journal.

-- Matt Swiatlowski --
Matt Swiatlowski, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, received a $1000 grant. The money will go towards his archival
study on New World Records' Recorded Anthology of American Music (RAAM). His
study will be conducted in the archives of New World Records, in New York.
The 100-disc RAAM commemorates the 1976 Bicentennial Celebration. It is an
exhaustive survey of vernacular, popular, and serious-music recordings made
in the U.S., and includes several titles dedicated to ethnic vernacular
forms. His research on RAAM is part of a larger dissertation project on the
circulation of commercially-produced, pre-war ethnic vernacular recording in
the post-war reissue economy. 

For more information about the Research Grants, visit:
http://www.arsc-audio.org/committees/researchgrants.html

The deadline for receipt of applications for the next grant cycle is
February 28, 2017. 


The Association for Recorded Sound Collections is a nonprofit organization
dedicated to the preservation and study of sound recordings -- in all genres
of music and speech, in all formats, and from all periods. ARSC is unique in
bringing together private individuals and institutional professionals --
everyone with a serious interest in recorded sound.


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