Shelf Life: From the Library to the Stage
Students from The New School’s College of Performing Arts bring the New York Public Library Archives to life combining research and original composition, under the direction of Jane Ira Bloom.
Imagine a college course whose homework involves complete immersion in the New York Public Library Archives and the composition of a piece of music based on that immersion. Shelf Life—a class-turned-extra-curricular at The New School’s College of Performing Arts, led by Jane Ira Bloom—is one such course.
Led by Jane Ira Bloom, five students from the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and one student from Mannes School of Music were tasked with “bringing the archives alive.” The students spent hours researching a topic of their choosing in the NYPL Archives—and now they’ve created original compositions and performance based on that research.
This Thursday, December 7, the students will perform their compositions, appropriately titled Shelf Life, followed by a Q&A on their research, at NYPL’s Bruno Walter Auditorium. The performances will include a wide array of instrumentation, voice/spoken word, and other visual media. Get to know the six students below.
Nick Dunston ’19 | Jazz and Contemporary Music Major at the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts
Q: What interested you about this project?
Dunston: I’ve recently developed an interest in more academic and scholarly approaches to learning about music and art, in addition to my already practical associations with it (through performing and composing). This project is a perfect opportunity for the academic and practical approaches of learning to intersect.
Q: What artifact or resources did you end up selecting and why?
Dunston: I was able to read some unpublished poetry by Amiri Baraka. I already had books related to my topics of interest, but being able to see Baraka’s unpublished works is something I only could have done through the New York Performing Arts Library. I originally only sought out the poetry for the sake of learning historical facts, but it actually ended up inspiring a major musical component of my composition.
Q: What surprised you about combining research with music?
Dunston: I was surprised at how personal my composition would get. At first I assumed that it’d be rather dry and more intellectually centered. Everything I compose is intellectually and emotionally informed in some sort balance, but this piece in particular is probably the most vulnerable and emotionally raw piece of music I’ve written so far, and I didn’t expect that to happen because of this project.
Q: What are 5 words you would use to describe your upcoming performance?
Dunston: Naked, Raw, Unexplored, Family, Pulse
Kalun Leung ’18, Professional Studies Diploma on Trombone at Mannes School of Music
Q: What interested you about this project?
Leung: Getting back to old-school, detective-style, pen and paper research. Digging deep into tangible primary resources; being able to touch archival material; not relying on fragmented and second-hand info from the internet.
Q: What artifact or resources did you end up selecting and why?
Leung: I ended up using 5 digital Macpaint drawings by Keith Haring, from the Timothy Leary Archives. Haring’s work is instantly recognizable and continues to permeate contemporary pop culture in the form of graphic tees and fashion endorsements. Besides personally owning Haring shirts, underwear, and branded notebooks, I was intrigued when I discovered digital art that researchers unearthed in a floppy disk that the artist sent to Timothy Leary in the 80s. These were the only known digital images that Haring produced, 3 of which I will reveal to the public for the first time!
Q: What surprised you about combining research with music?
Leung: I was surprised that the Keith Haring Foundation gave me permission to use Haring’s works. Using music and academia opened up possibilities for tapping into material that would have otherwise remained in the collections of a private estate.
Michael Sheelar ’18, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music
Q: What interested you about this project?
Sheelar: I was so interested in this project because of my past experience working with Jane Ira Bloom. I knew that this would be a very special chance to learn about my research topic in a more personal and serious way.
Q: What artifact or resources did you end up selecting and why?
Sheelar: I selected a collection of thirty letters written between 1942 and 1945. These letters were written by Martha Graham, to her dear friend and colleague; David Zellmer. During this correspondence David was deployed overseas in the Pacific, returning back home in 1945. In these letters, I’ve learned an incredible amount about Martha Graham. She writes so beautifully, including pieces of poetry she is taken by, updates on her rehearsal and projects, her thoughts on religion and Buddhism, and much more. Pieces of these letters, are the inspiration for my project.
Q: What surprised you about combining research with music?
Sheelar: I was surprised at how smoothly this whole process went. Much of the music that I have been writing, and listening to recently has so much to do with poetry, and story. So I was so happy to have found this collection—Martha’s words are so inspiring.
Q: What are 5 words you would use to describe your upcoming performance?
Sheelar: Dramatic, personal, poetic, joy!, and thematic.
Steve Williams ‘19, Jazz and Anthropology major at the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts
Q: What interested you about this project?
Williams: I wanted to examine the life of Charles Mingus through how he interpreted himself and how he was as a composer, but separate from the deification of his personality in tandem with his high temperament. People look at his bass playing and his mood swings, but I wanted to delve into his unique composition style and his literary mind.
Q: What artifact or resources did you end up selecting and why?
Williams: I mostly used excerpts of his correspondences with Dr Timothy Leary, which were found in postcards that contained everything from general life advice to Mingus’s own Parables. I also used bits of the documentary Charles Mingus 1968, where Mingus is evicted from his apartment. Both of these sources contribute to how Mingus went through life and viewed other people, but also how Mingus viewed other people’s interpretations of his being.
Q: Describe the immersion in the NYPL archives in one word.
Williams: Overwhelming.
Q: What surprised you about combining research with music?
Williams: There wasn’t much that I found surprising about taking all of the research and turning it into music. Mingus was such a musical person that every bit of research I did on him was inextricably tied to something deeply musical and therefore natural to transfer into music.
Q: What are 5 words you would use to describe your upcoming performance?
Williams: Quirky, Loud, Abstruse, Serious, Silly
Blake Opper ’18 | School of Jazz and Contemporary Music
Q: What artifact or resources did you end up selecting and why?
Opper: I predominantly focused on a video documentation of the Joan Jonas performance piece Reanimation. It laid out her process in very specific and interesting ways.
Q: Describe the immersion in the NYPL archives in one word.
Opper: Awakening.
Q: What surprised you about combining research with music?
Opper: Very often I felt led to make decisions beyond what I could logically explain. I thought that with research everything would be very traceable but many decisions were made beyond an explainable rationale.
Q: What are 5 words you would use to describe your upcoming performance?
Opper: An exploration of collaborative practice.
Zosha Warpeha ’18 | BA/FA Program (BFA in Jazz from The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music + BA in Interdisciplinary Science from Eugene Lang College )
Q: What interested you about this project?
Warpeha: I was attracted to the independent study opportunity because of the archival recordings and ethnographies available at the NYPL. I chose to research a traditional Norwegian instrument, the hardingfele, and the compositional and improvisational structure of the music that is traditionally performed on the instrument.
Q: What artifact or resources did you end up selecting and why?Warpeha: The resources that I focused on during this project were an ethnography of the hardingfele tradition and a multi-volume analysis of a specific group of songs in a region of Norway. The ethnography was helpful in understanding the history and meaning of the instrument in the greater context of the country and culture, while the analysis opened my eyes to compositional and improvisational techniques that are inherent in the tradition.
Q: Describe the immersion in the NYPL archives in one word.
Warpeha: Vast.
Q: What surprised you about combining research with music?
Warpeha: I was worried about how to compose a piece based off of my research — I didn’t know how to approach writing a piece that would still be natural and organic like the folk tradition itself, which is not an intellectual or research-based art form. I also did not want to attempt to compose a piece fully in the traditional style, because I am such a newcomer to the music and have not spent nearly enough time immersed in the tradition. However, after coming across a set of diagrams that visually illustrated cyclical phrasing and motivic development in the tradition, I sat down with my instrument and found that the concepts that I had just glanced at in visual form found their way into my improvisations and later into my compositional process.
Q: What are 5 words you would use to describe your upcoming performance?
Warpeha: shimmer, dream, flutter, ice, space
