February 21, 2016 Exhibition Travels to Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles
“Chamber Music: The Life and Legacy of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge”
Contact: Donna Urschel (202) 707-1639,
The Library of Congress exhibition “Chamber Music: The Life and Legacy of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge” will travel to Los Angeles, opening at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in the Library of Congress Ira Gershwin Gallery on Saturday, March 5.
Free and open to the public, the exhibition runs through September 2016.
The exhibition highlights the life and achievements of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, whose philanthropy helped make chamber music available to all. In 1925, she built at the Library of Congress an intimate, acoustically excellent auditorium that bears her name and established a foundation at the Library, ensuring that her support for contemporary music would continue for many generations.
Coolidge and her foundation have been responsible for the creation of such incomparable classics of chamber music as Béla Bartók’s monumental “String Quartet No. 5” (1934), Samuel Barber’s “Hermit Songs” (1953), and George Crumb’s “Ancient Voices of Children” (1970), all of which were premiered onstage in the Coolidge Auditorium. She was a pioneer in commissioning dance, from the 1928 “Apollon Musagète” by Igor Stravinsky, with choreography by Adolph Bolm, to several new ballets in the 1940s for Martha Graham, undoubtedly the most famous of which is Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring.”
The exhibition was displayed in the James Madison Memorial Building at the Library of Congress from Aug. 13, 2015 through Jan. 23, 2016. It can be viewed online here.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Library’s 90th anniversary concert season kicked off in October 2015, with more than 90 concerts, films, lectures, workshops and special presentations. The programming continues through May 2016. For more information on the concert series, visit loc.gov/concerts/.
The Library of Congress Music Division, with more than 21 million items, holds the world's largest music collection. Particular areas of strength include opera (scores and librettos), stage and screen musicals, chamber music, jazz and American popular song. The Music Division is home to approximately 600 archival collections, most of them the personal papers (including music scores as well as correspondence, photographs, legal and financial documents, programs, clippings and other materials) documenting the lives and careers of stellar composers and performers. For more information, visit loc.gov/rr/perform/.
The Library of Congress, the nation’s first-established federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 162 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at loc.gov.
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PR 16-038
2016-02-22
ISSN 0731-3527