The ARSC Conference was FABULOUS! A know some of you have been to the San Filippo Mansion for the MAPS meetings but I understand they are only 3 hours or so. We had over TWELVE hours at the estate and plenty of time see ALL the areas and hear nearly 100 automated instruments. I have LOTS of photos and will be sharing the slide show shortly. It was great to see some phono-Lers like the Rolfs. Anyway, Cary Ginell wrote a super 3 part report for 78-L and ARSClist and I know many of you are not on that list. So I'm copying it below. BTW, ARSC goes to Palo Alto CA next year and it's the last weekend in March! ALSO, the Conference was recorded and you will be able to purchase a CD set of nearly ALL the 3 days for only $35.00. For those with Powerpoint, you'll even see some of the visuals. Steve
It's 11:30pm here in Milwaukee and I've just ended my day here at the 41st ASRC Conference. I suppose other conference-goers are still out sampling the Milwaukee beer, but since I hate beer, I'm in my room, kicking back and checking out all the goodies we've been getting. It has been a most enjoyable and productive conference so far. The first day was filled with great information, music, and a few laughs as well. We knew that the conference was going to be special when we received our de regeurs tote bags. Over the years we've received different kinds, from canvas bags like you get a health food stores to cheap plastic record store bags. This year's is a beautiful black bag with zippered compartments and a shoulder strap with the ARSC logo (and sponsors as well) on it. Accomodations are first rate here at the Hilton, an Art Deco building that has been beautifully restored. All conference goers were presented with a coupon for a free CD from Archeophone, documenting REALLY naughty cylinders from the Victorian era - we're not talking double entendre records here, folks, these are indecent recordings from the 1890s (known as pornophony) that I wouldn't let my wife hear, much less my kids. Even David Diehl is blushing... The conference began with my presentation on vocalist/guitarist Jack Teter, leader of the Jack Teter Trio and a longtime Milwaukee favorite on radio. Teter's daughter Beverly was in attendance and was very moved by the tribute to her father. Following that was Mike Biel's fascinating "pre-history" of the various station identification chimes used by the NBC network, many of which were decidedly different from the familiar G-E-C triad of notes. Bill Klinger showed us a prototype of a new polycarbonate-based archival holder for cylinders, which will be prove to be not only beneficial to the preservation of cylinders, but inexpensive for collectors as well as institutions. Rob Bamberger and Tim Brooks updated us on the current status of the Copyright Wars; in light of the UK's recent rejection of a proposal to extend copyrights on sound recordings in excess of 50 years, this proves encouraging for efforts to change or even revert U.S. copyright laws. After lunch, the theme was preservation of audio materials in small institutions as well as how the New York Philharmonic archives are handled, the latter courtesy of a film by curator Adrian Cosentini. Finally, a fascinating two-part study on early Irish American music, presented by probably the two most respected scholars on the subject; Mick Moloney and Harry Bradshaw. We heard original recordings by everyone from Nora Bayes and Michael Coleman to the immortal John McCormack and many fabulous traditional Irish instrumental recordings from the 1920s. After this, everyone bussed over to the Ward Irish Fest Center where we were treated to a sumptuous banquet of local sausages, sauerkraut, and potatoes, while being serenaded by Frogwater, a fiddle and guitar duo playing traditional Irish music. The Ward archive upstairs houses a remarkable collection of Irish and Irish-related material, including Irish sheet music, instruments, 78s, victrolas, jukeboxes, and one of the largest collections of Bing Crosby recordings in one place. The weather was chilly with light winds blowing, but most of us stayed in the hotel for most of the day. There was too much to do and see! The silent auction is in full swing, with a few 78s but mostly enticing books on display. Kudos to Kurt Nauck, Barry Stapleton, and Ed Ward and the Ward Irish Music Archive for really showing us how to put on a conference! Wish everybody was here. I'm sure there will be other reports trickling in over the next week or so, but those were my two cents. Cary Ginell Origin Jazz Library www.originjazz.com Yeah, well, the simultaneous stuff hit us head-on today, when the whole day was divided up in two tracks (no wonder I felt like an Ampex tape deck all day...), so choices needed to be made and people were slipping in and out of the various meeting rooms all day. Nathaniel Shilkret's grandson, Niel Shell (kind of shorthand for his famous relative) pointed out a series of impressive factoids about his Zelig-like relative. Dennis Rooney presented a audio-visual memorial for those personalities in music who passed away in 1957 (c'mon, Dennis! What happened to Carson Robison? The program promised!). Actually, somehow how I can't picture the erudite Rooney saying "Life Gits Teejus, Don't It" with a straight face. Hannah Sommers gave us a quick tour of the musical archives of National Public Radio and Deborah Gillespie played some highlights from the huge John Steiner collection that was donated to the Chicago Jazz Library (4 truckloads of stuff). To every question that was asked t! hat started: "Did the collection contain...?" she responded, "there were FOUR TRUCKLOADS" of material" - most has still not been examined. I missed much of the next session because I was up to my knees in vintage paper memorabilia in a nearby used bookstore that Irish music expert Harry Bradshaw said was "absolutely Dickensian." Actually, The Old Curiosity Shop would have been a good name for this place because it was floor-to-ceiling with books and surprising stuff. I picked up vintage supplements and catalogs from Musicraft and Asch/Stinson, plus a Carnegie Hall program of the memorial concert for Sergei Rachmaninoff from 1943, and a Geraldine Farrar program from 1913, among other goodies. Richard Hess, Seth Winner, and Doug Pomeroy displayed their prodigious talents in restoring damaged recordings, with Cedar and its new plug-in known as RETOUCH which seamlessly eliminated intrusive coughs from live performances, technicians bumping into equipment, and even ground hum explosions caused by repatching a cord, not to mention the usual ticks, pops, and cracks. Magical stuff. I should know. One of the first things Seth did with RETOUCH was a cracked copy of a Frank Trumbauer alternate take that we eventually issued on our Bix Restored, Vol. 5 CD. The conference took a little break for the evening, so instead of engaging in the usual can-you-top-this stories at the Roundtable, I took a bus to Miller Park and watched the Milwaukee Brewers demolish the Pittsburgh Pirates, 10-0. I hadn't eaten lunch, and it was $1.00 hot dog night. Plus, I got a free Jim Gantner bobble head doll, which will go nicely next to the caricature centerpiece of Snooky Young I got at his 80th birthday party. Bet nobody has both of those!! Buses take off for the Victorian Palace early tomorrow morning so I'm going to hit the ol' hay. Since I missed quite a few presentations in the parallel track, I'm sure someone else will fill in the blanks on what else was presented. Cary Ginell Origin Jazz Library www.originjazz.com Part 3 Well, it's been more than 48 hours after our day at the Sanfilippo Victorian Palace and I'm still at somewhat of a loss for words on how to describe the place. The best I can come up with is to ask you to imagine what Citizen Kane would have done had he been a collector of automated music machines. This isn't really fair to Jasper Sanfilippo because this retiring, modest gentleman is as far removed from the megalomaniac portrayed by Orson Welles as you can get. OK, let's put it this way - you have two kinds of people: those with unlimited funds (not us) and those with great taste, sensitivity, an eye for quality and the heart of a preservationist (us). Rarely do you find someone who can put those two things together. That's who Jasper is. The Sanfilippo estate is set out in the country about 40 miles from Chicago. If you search the Internet, you'll find a few stories on the place in magazines like Forbes or in The New York Times. There are two major buildings involved; one is the Victorian mansion (dubbed "La Place de Musique" - an understatement if there ever was one) and what is known as the Carousel House. The latter is basically an airplane hangar, built to contain the largest pieces of Jasper's collection: antique steam engines, a Victorian locomotive with a plush passenger train, a series of exquisitely restored dance organs & orchestrions placed on the circumference of the building, and, the Eden Palais, a fully restored European salon carousel. The facade of the carousel is what hits you when you walk into the unassuming building. It's as long as a basketball court and half as high. Carved figures, stained glass, a painting by Gallet copied from a Boucher original in the Louvre graces the top. It even has the original ticket booth and entry doors with etched and frosted glass windows. The equally elaborate dance organs played music from "Darktown Strutters' Ball" to "Rock Around the Clock," and one even played an unabridged version of "The Blue Danube Waltz," with carved figures waltzing inside the machine. Our lunch was a buffet of picnic food: hamburgers, brats, potato salad, and fruit. In light of this magnificence, the impressive presentations by Austrian Helmut Kowar and Philip Carli presented fascinating information about musical automota (a word I hadn't heard of before this conference) and how lavish orchestrions were used by the well-heeled as grand status symbols. >From there, we walked down the road to "La Place de Musique," whose contents are divided into a series of extraordinary rooms. There were Victrolas seemingly everywhere, their horns gleaming and standing at attention. Orchestrions were on nearly every wall, plus two ranks of vintage mutoscopes, machines that played violins, mandolins, and banjos, slot machines, record players disguised as lamps, music boxes, and in the Music Room, an 8,000 pipe, 80 rank theater organ. Curator Robert Ridgeway demonstrated many of these instruments in an afternoon talk and then we were given free reign to explore the house and hear some of the countless machines tucked away in every nook and cranny of the house. Access to the various floors was provided by either gracefully curving staircases or an ornate elevator. We returned to the Carousel House for the sumptuous banquet (chicken cordon bleu, beef tips, vegetable lasagna) followed by the ARSC Awards. From there, we returned to the Place de Musique for an evening performance on the theatre organ by Walt Strony, with selections ranging from a marvelous rendition of the Victory at Sea suite by Richard Rodgers to an enchanting version of "Somewhere" from "West Side Story" to variations on "I Wish I Were an Oscar Mayer Wiener," played in a variety of styles - from the bombast of the 1812 Overture to a cha-cha. An after-concert tour of the guts of the organ took us up four flights of stairs, where we were able to witness the workings of the organ while "Maleguena" was being played. I could go on and on about the things we saw on Saturday, but it's really pointless. If there ever was an argument for "ya hadda be there," this was it. I'm sure others will chime in (sorry) about their experience, but even to the jaded ARSCian, it was "Jaw-Dropping Time in Cook County." Here's one of several articles on the estate that includes some photos of what I described. __http://theatreorgans.com/hammond/keng/kenhtml/SanFillippoEstateVisit.htm__ (javascript:ol('http://theatreorgans.com/hammond/keng/kenhtml/SanFillippoEstate Visit.htm_');) (_http://theatreorgans.com/hammond/keng/kenhtml/SanFillippoEstateVisit.htm_ (javascript:ol('http://theatreorgans.com/hammond/keng/kenhtml/SanFillippoEstateV isit.htm');) ) We were told that our day-long stay at the estate was quite unusual, as most tours are limited only to a few hours, so the ARSCers lucky enough to go on this excursion were treated to a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I, for one, will never forget it. Cary Ginell Origin Jazz Library www.originjazz.com ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. From [email protected] Wed May 9 06:38:59 2007 From: [email protected] ([email protected]) Date: Wed May 9 06:39:23 2007 Subject: [Phono-L] Cary Ginell's ARSC Conference REport References: <[email protected]> Message-ID: <002601c7923f$65fef0b0$6101a...@wilenzick> OK, Steve, don't gloat over the ARSC 12 hours at the Sanfilippo mansion. We MAPS members may only have 3 hours there, but at least we can do it EVERY YEAR! :) Ray ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 8:14 PM Subject: [Phono-L] Cary Ginell's ARSC Conference REport > The ARSC Conference was FABULOUS! A know some of you have been to the San > Filippo Mansion for the MAPS meetings but I understand they are only 3 > hours or > so. We had over TWELVE hours at the estate and plenty of time see ALL the > areas and hear nearly 100 automated instruments. I have LOTS of photos > and will > be sharing the slide show shortly. >
