Forty Years of Steel: An Annotated Discography of Steel Band and Pan Recordings, 1951-1991 (Discographies)

Forty Years of Steel: An Annotated Discography of Steel Band and Pan Recordings, 1951-1991 (Discographies) Review

The first book of its kind, this discography covers the history of steel band and pan music on recordings from their beginnings. In more than 775 entries, it comprises all known recordings on phonograph records, cassettes, and compact disks in which one or more steel pans is featured or used in an accompanying role. This includes steel bands of any size and configuration, pan soloists, and small ensembles in a variety of settings. For each entry, information is provided on the location of the recording session/studio, release date, record company catalog number, and complete contents. Indexes facilitate access to artists, arrangers/conductors/musical directors, record titles, years of release, and compositions; and appendices provide additional information on record manufacturers and distributors, calypsonians, and sources. A reference bibliography completes the work. The creation, teaching, and performance of most of othe pan music of the past belongs to an oral tradition. There is therefore little written preservation of this work and audio recordings often provide the only documentation of the art of many gifted composers, arrangers, performers, and tuners. These recordings constitute a primary source of information regarding past performance practices, evolving playing styles and techniques, and pan tuning innovations. While serving as a guide for locating these recordings, this discography also will function as a research tool to aid researchers into many other aspects of the steel pan movement. As such, it will be a valuable resource for scholars, performing artists, educators, instrument builders, composers, arrangers, and enthusiasts.

An annotated bibliography of contemporary works programmable by wind band and orchestra.

An annotated bibliography of contemporary works programmable by wind band and orchestra. Review

This study looked at the contemporary repertoire of college winds bands and professional orchestras. Music performed between Fall 2003 and Spring 2003 was collected from members of the College Band Directors National Association (n=23,677) and the League of American Symphony Orchestras (n=15,891). This collection reinforced the perception college wind bands program more contemporary music than professional orchestras. Also consistent with previous studies is the orchestra repertoire is centered around a core of composers. The core repertoire of the college wind band is not as narrow and is still growing. Contemporary composers were selected based on when they lived and having a minimum number of works performed by college wind bands and/or professional orchestras. From these composers (n=465) it was determined if they had composed a work performable by both college wind bands and professional orchestras. There were a total of 290 composers with 765 compositions compiled in an annotated bibliography. Biographies for each composer were drafted from available material. Information obtained for each work included composition date, duration, movements, publisher, instrumentation, premiere, commission, dedication, recordings, selected performances, program note, and the number of times it was performed during the period of the study. In order to obtain additional information publishers and composers were contacted. The resulting works consisted of compositions scored for brass ensemble, chamber winds, orchestral winds and transcriptions. Also shown is that these works also represent some of the most performed contemporary works by college wind bands and professional orchestras. This study implies works for winds and single strings (two violins, viola, cello, and string bass) would be an area worth investigating.