Photos: Dan Fong
To request permission to reproduce these photos, please email sabine.kortals@colorado.edu.

Among the American Music Research Center (AMRC) collections, hidden gems exist around every corner: Colorado history, music legends, big band ephemera, silent film scores, letters from 91����Ƶ Boulder founders and more. In our new series—Gems of the AMRC collections—we aim to spotlight their content, and the stories of the people behind them.  

Our first deep dive explores the , comprising folders of photos captured by the legendary Colorado rock 'n' roll and folk music photographer.

wasn’t music at all, but a chance to capture the president at the time: Dwight D. Eisenhower. “Since I was such a little kid, all the photographers let me stand in the front. To me, those photos are amazing because at 14, I could tell that I already had the eye and the way to compose the pictures—plus they were really sharp and in focus.”

From there, Fong (Mktg. ’70) continued to take photos of everything and started his own photography business after graduating from 91����Ƶ Boulder. “I did everything from bar mitzvah photographs to portraits to weddings,” he recalls. “The biggest break came when KFML—the underground radio station—ended up three blocks from my studio. I went down there and made a deal with them: ‘I’ll come take photographs of the artists and give them to you for your advertising, and you do radio commercials for me.’ That was a big deal because that’s when I met all of the record guys.”

Fong’s photography is highly varied—from family portraits to posed album covers to current events photojournalism. But what he’s best known for is his 1970s concert photography. In his career, Fong photographed the Doobie Brothers, the Grateful Dead, Zephyr, The Who, Firefall, Fleetwood Mac and many more.

Stars of the collection include concert photos captured on the 91����Ƶ Boulder campus. There are shots of Otis Taylor performing with Zephyr on the steps of Norlin Library. There’s also a series of photos taken in Folsom stadium featuring Firefall and a very familiar horizon.

“I climbed up in the scaffolding to take all of those pictures of the people in the background and that teaches you not to be embarrassed—because, you know, 50,000 people are looking at you!”

A few years ago, Fong began thinking about how to ensure his collection outlived him, and welcomed the opportunity to house his collection at 91����Ƶ Boulder. “I’ve known a lot of photographers who didn’t think about archiving their work—and then something would happen, people would throw their work away or it wouldn’t go to the same place,” he says.

“My collection is huge and I had been thinking about what to do with it, so I asked Megan [Lead Archivist Megan Friedel] whether she was interested in archiving my entire collection. Had Megan and the university not said yes, so many of these images…you'd never see them.”

Even the Eisenhower photographs were nearly lost to time. “I lost that film in a moving box in my parents’ basement for 50 years—but when my mom died, I found the box. The university has a bunch of those photographs now.”

Through the years, Fong has changed cameras, gone from film to digital photography and evolved editing strategies—but he says the main change to his photography is how comfortable he has gotten behind the lens.

“Being a photographer is like being a basketball player,” he shares. “It’s like Caitlin Clark—you practice it and it’s muscle memory. That’s what happens after years of being a photographer.”

Coming up, the AMRC will host an exhibit with photographs from the Dan Fong Collection in April—stay tuned for details. Ongoing, the Dan Fong Collection is available to researchers and the public by appointment. 

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The Glenn Miller Collection now has a dedicated archivist in the University Libraries whose job will be to review and catalog over 1,400 boxes of artifacts from the legendary big band era musician who once attended 91����Ƶ Boulder.

In 1923, Alton Glen “Glenn” Miller attended 91����Ƶ Boulder for three semesters before becoming one of the most successful big band musicians of the 20th century. A gift from a group of committed jazz supporters allowed the University Libraries to hire an archivist to review and catalog the boxes safely secured in the Libraries Rare and Distinctive Collections (RaD).

The new archivist, A. R. Flynn, joined the Libraries after receiving a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of Denver. In this profile we discuss Flynn’s history and interest in this project. 

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“[In the United States,] I pronounce my last name ‘Wee,’” he replies to Question No. 1, explaining that his family is Chinese-Filipino. “My parents immigrated from Manila and I was born in Las Vegas. I grew up in southern California.”

Question No. 2 addresses the bottom of his bio, which notes that Uy “biked across the United States, from California to Massachusetts, in 42 days.” 

So, the obvious query: Will he peddle his way from Massachusetts to begin his new position in Boulder? More laughter. “Actually, I thought about it—but only for a minute.” Instead, he’ll pack his bags and drive west to assume a critical role at our college.

“The center provides an excellent opportunity for a researcher and professor,” he says. “In Boulder, I can immerse myself in the center’s archives, as well as incorporate the material in my teaching.”

Uy has a rich background in academia: He’s published a book on public and private arts funding and his other work appears in American Music, Journal of the Society for American Music, Journal of Musicology, and Music and Arts in Action. He’s also the recipient of several prestigious teaching awards and served as the Allston Burr Resident Dean of Dunster House and Assistant Dean of Harvard College from 2017 to 2023.

Uy is enthusiastic about the wide-ranging responsibilities and activities ahead of him. “I want to gain a deeper understanding of how the center operates and learn from its remarkable previous directors,” he says. “From them, the advisory board and others, I can think about how best to realize the center’s mission and how to achieve the goals of helping students and the community engage with our archival material. Perhaps our amazing performers within the College of Music students and faculty can showcase this music.

“I look forward to working with both undergraduate and graduate students, and I hope to continue to raise the profile of the AMRC.”

Uy also speaks in admiration of the college’s universal musician mission to develop well-rounded, multiskilled students. “I think the work of the center ties in with this mission perfectly,” he says. “Through what we do, what we research and what we write, we can all learn more about ourselves.”

“We should remember the AMRC’s location and history as part of the ‘American West,’” he adds. “Integral to our work will be documenting, preserving and performing the contributions of Native Americans, Chicanos, Asian Americans and African Americans. This is what America really looks and looked like.

“At the AMRC, we can support this research, preservation and history sharing.”

The first person in his family to attend college in the United States—earning a bachelor’s at the University of California, Berkeley; a master’s at Oxford University; and a doctorate at Harvard University—Uy identifies as a member of the BGLTQ community and a person of color who’s committed to a more socially just world. He is an avid coxswain, runner and peony farmer.

Welcome!

Our gratitude to Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology Austin Okigbo who served as interim director of the American Music Research Center this past academic year.

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91����Ƶ Boulder’s vast and historically valuable Glenn Miller collection is set to take the spotlight, thanks to a philanthropy-funded archiving project.

In 1923, Alton Glen “Glenn” Miller attended 91����Ƶ Boulder for three semesters before becoming The gift from a group of committed jazz supporters is allowing the University Libraries to hire an archivist to review the campus’s collection of materials associated with Miller’s work—a mostly untapped trove of information about the iconic artist.

“The personal papers, photographs, music and other ephemera of the legendary Glenn Miller shed light on the man behind the music and open an extensive new collection of research for all to study and enjoy,” said Kate Tallman, assistant professor and interim faculty director of the university’s Rare & Distinctive Collections (RaD) team (part of the University Libraries). Tallman’s team manages the collections as part of its American Music Research Center archival collections (AMRC).

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Materials from renowned Boulder-based blues musician Otis Taylor are now part of 91����Ƶ Boulder’s American Music Research Center archival collections. "...housing his work at the AMRC is the best way to give him the visibility, the recognition and the honor that he deserves, as somebody who has made major contributions to American music and culture,” says Austin Okigbo, interim director of the AMRC which supports the research, performance and preservation of all music of the Americas with a particular emphasis on music diversity from the United States.

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The American Music Research Center (AMRC) has named Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology Austin Okigbo as its interim director for the 2023-’24 academic year. Okigbo, also an affiliate faculty member in the Center for African & African American Studies, global health and ethnic studies, is no stranger to the AMRC. 

Austin Okigbo

“I’ve been involved in the AMRC for as long as I’ve been at the College of Music,” Okigbo says. In the past—as an AMRC Faculty Affiliate and Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) on the AMRC’s Soundscapes of the People grant—he has participated in outreach activities and research opportunities, and he continues to serve on the AMRC Advisory Board as well as the editorial committee for the AMRC journal, Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal. Soundscapes of the People is, in part, funded through a 91����Ƶ Boulder Outreach Award from the Office for Outreach and Engagement.

This year, Okigbo has stepped in to lead the AMRC’s events and research projects while is underway. Susan Thomas, the AMRC’s former director, is now with the Butler School of Music in Austin, Texas; she continues her involvement in the Soundscapes of the People project as a faculty affiliate.

“My goal at this point in time is to make sure that the center maintains the things we are doing,” Okigbo says. “I want to make sure the programming that we have in place is well executed.” 

Coming up in October, the AMRC will host a pair of concerts titled “Song of Pueblo.” These concerts highlight the AMRC’s Soundscapes of the People study that’s documenting the history of Pueblo, Colorado, by researching its musical past and collecting oral testimonies.

“When you do a project like Soundscapes without something like these concerts, everything becomes confined to the libraries and archives,” Okigbo says. “Not everybody will be interested in going to the libraries to read up on what you have gathered, but a concert brings life to the community.”

“Song of Pueblo” features a folk oratorio composed by Daniel Valdez with an orchestration by two College of Music alumni: Max Wolpert and Ilan Blanck. The events—weaving together 16 songs and musical numbers that tell the compelling stories of the region’s early history—will highlight the El Pueblo Ensemble, which has been performing the oratorio since its inception, accompanied by the 91����Ƶ Boulder Chamber Orchestra conducted by Associate Director of Orchestras Renee Gilliland.

“I’m looking forward to my role as interim director,” Okigbo concludes. “And I’m optimistic that we’re going to find the right person to permanently lead the AMRC going forward.”

“Song of Pueblo” concerts are and . These free performances are made possible through The Roser Visiting Artist Endowment. Additionally, Valdez will present a lecture on Oct. 25, 4:15-5:30 p.m., in the British Studies Room of Norlin Library on the 91����Ƶ Boulder campus!

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“I think the world would be very interested in some of this music,” Jones says.

Susan Thomas, the director of the AMRC, says, “I was struck by both his passion and his commitment but also by the really unique access that he has to the history and performance practice of a choral tradition of the Americas. His personal experience is really unmatched and very special.”

Jones draws much of his inspiration from his late mentor Noel Dexter, a Jamaican composer. “Mr. Dexter decided that he never wanted to sing about ‘in the bleak midwinter’ in a country where we’ve never experienced winter. And so he started writing pieces and from there, other composers saw that we could bridge our language with our folk forms, and create something that was uniquely Jamaican,” he says.

In addition to being inspired by Dexter’s artistry, Jones also has a personal connection to him. Dexter gave him his first voice lesson 12 years ago.

Through the Porter Fellowship, Jones will work on publishing pieces from Jamaican composers, primarily Dexter. Often, Jamaican music isn’t published or available to perform outside the island country. 

“I know of less than 10 pieces of Jamaican music that have been published,” Jones says. “We’re trying to create accessibility for people—to say, hey, this music is accessible, the language is not that difficult, we can send you with these pieces.”

Jones also hopes to bring Franklin E. Halliburton, a Jamaican conductor, musical director and contemporary of Dexter, to 91����Ƶ Boulder to talk about Dexter and how Jamaican music came to be. “It’s lots of work, but I think it’s work that needs to be done because Mr. Dexter was a very humble person and even in his passing, the thing that he wanted people to know was that he tried,” Jones says. “He’s literally the only reason I’m even studying music here today. So I want to honor him that way.”

“I think O'Neil has a really clear understanding of how his research and his creative work will impact the field,” adds Thomas. “It’s always amazing when we see that from a graduate student. He’s definitely one of those people that came into 91����Ƶ Boulder carrying out the mission of the AMRC.”

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For most music students in the 21st century, the idea of silent films seems strangely far-away. One new 91����Ƶ Boulder class seeks to change that.

The class, a DMA seminar titled Scoring Silent Film, explores the history of silent films while the students also score the films themselves. Professor of Musicology Susan Thomas co-teaches the class alongside silent film enthusiast and artist-in-residence Rodney Sauer. 

Sauer explains that there’s three ways to score a film. “One is improvisation, where you just sit down and make stuff up. The second is composition, where you write new music for a film, and that can be very effective but it’s also very time consuming. The third method is what I’m teaching, which is compilation,” he says.  

“This is where you look at the film, and for each scene in the film, you choose a piece of music that is already in your library, and then you use that music. That saves you the effort of composing and arranging. This is why it was so important during the silent era; a lot of times the movies would change every week, and you just had to come up with two more hours of music every week.”

Students use the , part of the American Music Research Center’s archive, to pull pieces they think will work with the films. The collection once belonged to Los Angeles’s Grauman Theatres chain, and houses pre-composed pieces that movie theatres would have in their libraries for the live musicians to use. These pieces are digitally accessible due to a grant.

“I think my favorite part of the class is just reading all of this music and hearing all of these things that probably haven't been heard for 100 years, or have never been played, because some of it is quite nice,” says DMA student Jonathon Winter. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had to be exposed to a bunch of new pieces.”

The class final will be a concert and film screening, showing off the brand-new compilated scores. The class of musicians will present scores for “Gertie the Dinosaur” (1914), “Get Out and Get Under” (1920) and “Filibus: The Mysterious Air Pirate” (1915) on May 4th in the Imig Music Building.

For the students, this class has introduced a brand-new way of thinking about music in movies.

“I’ve gained this whole appreciation for the art of silent film making and how unique it is and how different it is. Not just from the musical aspects, but just the overall presentation and that live element to it, it’s such an organic presentation of a film, that I really have come to resonate with,” says DMA student Cameron Holt.

The scores the students create will be available for high school educators who may want to perform these premade scores with their students. Sauer is also creating video tutorials about scoring silent films. Both resources will be accessible on the AMRC website by June 2023. 

“We have created, using these old films, something new and something interesting, which is not at all what I thought I’d be doing when I picked out this class. But that’s why you should come, because even if you are familiar with these films, on the off chance you are, you’re not going to be familiar with our presentation. We’ve created a new and unique way to present these films that I think will be compelling for any audience member,” Holt says.

For more information about the final concert, click here.

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This biannual award is open to both undergraduate and graduate students, and supports the performance of housed in the AMRC Archive in Norlin Library’s Rare and Distinctive Collections. Interested undergraduate and graduate students may apply for the Alex Craig and Christina Lynn-Craig Living Music Award ; the deadline to apply is April 7.

“It’s a great opportunity for students to get to know the music of a composer they may not have been aware of, as well as an opportunity for students to work with archival collections,” says AMRC Director Susan Thomas.

“Love for my husband and his music. And joy in sharing music he created with people who have not had an opportunity to perform it or hear it, yet. Alex cherished the time he spent collaborating with musicians of all ages and abilities.” 

Adds Lynn-Craig, “I met Alex when I was in graduate school. We performed together frequently in Grusin Music Hall when I was working on my DMA in voice performance and pedagogy, and when I was on the voice faculty. It made sense to establish a fund at 91����Ƶ Boulder to encourage students to perform his music. 

“I’m certain that Alex would be excited to know that his compositions will be sung, played and heard again in this special place. I look forward to meeting the students who receive the award and telling them about Alex!”

The Alex Craig and Christina Lynn-Craig Living Music Award comes with a $1,000 prize and supports work that takes place between June 2023-April 2024. After completion of the project the award winner is expected to submit a short report summarizing the work and research accomplished. Activities eligible to receive this award include public performances or recitals of Craig’s vocal, instrumental chamber, choral or orchestral music; as well as recording projects of all kinds related to the above in the coming year.

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It was a busy fall for the American Music Research Center!

One of the many projects happening in the AMRC is the Pueblo "Soundscapes of the People" project. Two 91����Ƶ Boulder PhD students, Lydia Wagenknecht and Ben Cefkin, have gotten the chance to work on this project alongside AMRC Director Dr. Susan Thomas, Dr. Austin Okigbo and from the University of California, Riverside. Both of these students are studying ethnomusicology and have been working on the project since summer 2021. 

The Soundscapes project explores the historical significance of Pueblo, Colorado and the culture of the community there, particularly highlighting local music. This research initiative is funded by the National Endowment for Humanities and 91����Ƶ Boulder’s Office of Research and Innovation and Office of Outreach and Community Engagement. The team spends time in Pueblo interviewing people and traveling to culturally significant places. For the graduate students, the project requires fieldwork in Pueblo and work combing through the completed interviews and preparing them for archival in the 91����Ƶ Boulder library.

“This work entails taking the video and audio from the interviews and editing them, making them more or less usable for the archive, and then we index them, so we add keywords so that once they go into the archive they’re easily searchable and people can use them for research,” Wagenknecht says. 

Through the experience, they’ve enjoyed bonding with community members and learning how to make connections in a new place.  Wagenknecht, shown here with Thomas and Chávez, says, “This has been a really good chance to be somewhere long term and see how Susan and Xóchitl build relationships- not just extract information from people but also ask how can we help you?”

Cefkin added that he has learned a lot about how interviews are structured and the variety of questions asked. “We’ve gotten the opportunity to sit in on interviews that Susan Thomas or Xochtil Chávez have given, and it’s really interesting for me to see how much of the material that is asked by interviewers doesn’t have to do with music,” he says. “There’s so much of regular life, culture, family history, local folklore. There’s so much other background that is important in the interview process to establish cultural information, and it’s really interesting to see how that fits in.”

Another highlight of the project? The food! Pueblo is known for a specific variety of chile that makes an appearance in many of the local cuisines.
“The Pueblo chile is a defining aspect of the identity down there. It’s incorporated primarily into Mexican influenced food and native and Spanish mixture. But it’s also been incorporated into food from other communities,” Cefkin says. “One of my favorite places down in Pueblo is a little Italian grocery and they have a bunch of ready made filled breads and stuff like that. It has mozzarella, salami, sausage meat and Pueblo chiles- Which is not at all traditional to that style of Italian food, but the Italian communities in Pueblo are incorporating it in.”

Spending so much time in Pueblo has allowed Wagenknecht and Cefkin to understand the culture and history of the area. Pueblo was a mining town, a trading post, and even sat on the international US/Mexico border until 1848.
“[Soundscapes] really is showcasing Pueblo as this very rich cultural center in the state, and that has not been the narrative statewide,” Cefkin says. “I think just being able to change how Pueblo is viewed by other Coloradoans is one very important aspect of this.”

After this project, Wagenknecht said she feels more confident in her ability to take on ethnomusicology alone. She’s headed to her dissertation fieldwork in Southern Chile in the Spring, and said she understands more how to build a network in a new place.

“I think that the Pueblo experience has been really nice to see it from the beginning and see how to reach out to people and use connections in the community to reach out to other communities- that kind of snowballing idea, where you talk to one person and ask who they know who would be a good fit for the project,” she says.

Participating in the Soundscapes project has given Cefkin and Wagenknecht a chance to observe professionals in their field and practice getting to know a community. They will both walk away with practical experience and a deep appreciation for the local culture in Pueblo.
 

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