Arts and Entertainment

Waring Collection celebrates classical music on iTunes U

This month's podcast from Fred Waring's America celebrates classical music through the piano mastery of Livingston Gearhart and Virginia Morley. The collection known as Fred Waring's America, is a unique part of the Special Collections Library at Penn State University Libraries. The current selection lets listeners relive the piano performances of Gearhart and Morley as featured on Fred Waring's television and radio shows.

Fred Waring's America documents 20th century American popular culture through song, radio, movies and television performance. The large-scale collection provides primary source material for researchers, musicians and music educators, orchestra and choral conductors, documentary filmmakers, golden-age radio enthusiasts as well as media and cultural historians.

Listeners can link via http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/psu.edu.2125864609 or they can follow these steps:

  • -- Go to https://itunes.psu.edu/
  • -- Log in as a Penn State user or a guest (wait for iTunes to launch)
  • -- Select "Penn State Podcast Shows"
  • -- Select "Fred Waring Collection"

New podcasts will be added each month. The podcasts will feature clips from the collection's vast archive of 25,000 recordings on disc, wire, tape, kinescope and video. The recordings cover every radio and television broadcast made by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians from 1933¬1960; concert recordings; reference recordings of Fred Waring music workshop sessions and concerts; and other miscellaneous performances, appearances and interviews, including recent interviews with famous cartoonists who spent time at Waring's golf resort every summer from the late 1940s through 1970s.

For more information, call 814-863-2911.

Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated May 10, 2011