When Maya Angelou said, "Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness," she certainly didn't know how pertinent her words would become to us in 2020. Music truly can be our refuge in a world where we are all trying to keep our physical distance while staying emotionally connected. For our fourth Pub Hub collection, we'll highlight many musical resources, but if we forget your favorite, please let us know over on the Pub Hub Facebook page.
If you haven't yet used Stingray Qello, you are missing out. Feel like attending a concert? You can! Right from the safety of your home! Qello has an incredibly huge collection of on-demand full-length performances, concert films, and music documentaries. You can watch performances from Queen, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga, Metallica, Eric Clapton, Nirvana, The Rolling Stones, Heart, Beyoncé, Bob Marley...the list goes on and on. Browse 100 years of music, from the 1920s to today, and all kinds of genres. The music documentaries are also fantastic, featuring titles like Down The Tracks - The Music That Influenced Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, Up Close and Personal. Qello is also available as a downloadable app in the BiblioTech App Store.
If you feel inspired after watching a Qello concert and want to learn how to make your own music, we have a resource for that, too! Check out ArtistWorks, where you can find world-class instruction through self-paced video lessons from Grammy Award–winning musicians. You can learn to play the guitar, the banjo, the harmonica and many more instruments. There are also voice and music theory lessons offered.
On both cloudLibrary and BiblioBoard, we have I<3 Music shelves filled with great music reads. On the cloudLibrary shelf, you can listen to The History of Rock, or check out Sonny's Bridge, a great read-a-loud book about legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. On the BiblioBoard shelf, we are featuring a wide variety of resources, many of which might help homeschooling parents teach a great music history lesson! Tune in to the lives and legacies of musicians from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic eras and beyond as you listen, watch, read and learn with the Great Composers anthology, which includes illustrated 19th-century biographies, operatic performances, audio files and more.
The musical magazines we offer via RBdigital are also great resources, from Rolling Stone to Guitarist, with many others as well. And, on The Great Courses, you can learn all about music, with courses like Music and History and Sacred Music.
Looking for even more musical inspiration?
- The Classical Music Institute of San Antonio now offers a social media show called Composer Madness 2020 on Facebook
- LiveNation has LiveFromHome, a new series of web concerts
- The Grammy Musuem offers many neat musical resources
- The London Philharmonic Orchestra offers recorded concerts
- Nightly streaming is offered from The Metropolitan Opera
Again, let us know if we missed any great resources, or just tell us what you're listening to, over on our Pub Hub Facebook Group!