Irving S. Gilmore Music Library

OHAM interview extracts now available in Avalon

Vivian Perlis with Aaron Copland
June 30, 2017

Adding to existing extracts available on its YouTube channel, additional materials from Oral History of American Music's (OHAM) renowned collection are now publicly available online via the Gilmore Music Library's recently launched instance of Avalon Media System. This new collection of extracts will serve as a test of Avalon's ability to provide unrestricted access to digital or digitized audiovisual materials to a global audience, rights permitting. 

Since its founding in 1969 at Yale University,  OHAM has been dedicated to the collection and preservation of the voices of the major musical figures of our time. The project captures musicians’ narratives and reflections in their own words through in-depth interviews. With an ever-expanding collection, OHAM is a living archive, currently comprising over 2,600 audio and video recordings. OHAM regularly conduct, catalogue, and transcribe interviews with emerging talents and established artists, producing a wealth of primary and secondary source material accessible to musicians, students, scholars, arts organizations, and the media.

The extracts now available online feature noted composers and performers from the 1960s through today including Eubie Blake, Nadia Boulanger, Anthony Braxton, Martin Bresnick, Charles Buesing (an employee of Charles Ives), John Cage, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Duke Ellington, Lou Harrison, Babe LaPine (Charles Ives’ barber!), David Lang, Ingram Marshall, Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.