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Music & Performing Arts Library

Music and Performing Arts Library

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1300 Music Building
1114 W. Nevada St.
Urbana, IL 61801

217.333.1173

Subjects: Dance, Music, Theatre

Introduction

Lists of library subscription streaming resources for the performing arts can be found below, along with free online resources and help materials. If you are off-campus and trying to access library resources, it's important to use the links below to access these tools so that you can log in with your NetID and password using the library's subscription.

Physical media items in a variety of formats can be found by searching the library catalog. Most of these items can be borrowed for 1 week with 3 renewals. Certain media items that accompany books or scores circulate for the same period as the print item. See the Find Scores and Recordings tab on the Finding Music Materials guide for tips on searching the library catalog.

Classical Music Library
Classical music library is a classical music service that enables listening and learning at library and home computers. In addition to full recordings of the works on the site, it includes program notes, composer biographies, and images cross-referenced to the recordings. Genre incorporate vocal and choral, instrumental, stage and screen, orchestral, chamber, and opera and operetta, with a particular focus on contemporary music and women composers. Recordings can be downloaded for a fee. Covers music from the medieval time period to the 21st century.
DRAM Online
A scholarly resource of recordings, including CD quality audio, liner notes and essays from New World, Composers Recordings (formerly Composers Recordings Inc./CRI) and other important labels. The basis for the collection is the diverse catalog of American music recordings by New World Records. Other contributing sources include the CRI, Albany, innova, Cedille, XI, Pogus, Deep Listening and Mutable Music labels.
Ethnographic Sound Archives
Ethnographic Sound Archives Online brings together over 2,000 hours of previously unpublished historic field recordings from around the world, alongside their supporting field notes and ethnographers’ metadata, opening new paths for the study of music in its cultural context.
Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings
This database provides access to thousands of audio field recordings, interviews, educational recordings, film footage, field notebooks, correspondence, and other resources from a variety of areas of study in collaboration with the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive.
Jazz Music Library
Jazz Music Library is the largest and most comprehensive collection of streaming jazz available online — with thousands of jazz artists, ensembles, albums, and genres.

Music Online: Listening (all ASP audio products)
American, Classical, Global, Jazz, and Popular music from Alexander Street Press. A multidisciplinary collection of audiovisual content that touches on the curriculum needs of virtually every department. Music Online: Listening allows students and researchers alike to analyze unique and valuable content from over 500 producers and distributors around the world.

Naxos Music Library
Naxos Music Library is the most comprehensive collection of classical music available online. It includes the complete Naxos, Marco Polo and Da Capo catalogues of over 170,000 tracks, including Classical music, Historical recordings, Jazz, World, Folk and Chinese music. Whilst listening, users can read notes on the works being played as well as biographical information on composers or artists in Naxos's extensive database.
Smithsonian Global Sound
Includes the published recordings owned by the non-profit Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label and the archival audio collections of the legendary Folkways Records, Cook, Dyer-Bennet, Fast Folk, Monitor, Paredon and other labels. Includes music recorded around the African continent for the International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University and material collected on the South Asian subcontinent from the Archive Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE), sponsored by the American Institute for Indian Studies.

Academic Video Online
A comprehensive video subscription spanning a wide range of topics such as anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. AVON includes a variety of video material available with curricular relevance: documentaries, interviews, feature films, performances, news programs and newsreels, demonstrations, and raw footage.
Broadway HD
BroadwayHD collects recordings of theatre and film performances both historical and from the 21st century.
Classical Music in Video
Searchable database for the study of classical music in streaming video format. At completion it will contain 1,000 hours of classical music performances and master classes captured on video--approximately 1,500 performances in all. The collection will contain performances of all forms of classical music, including major orchestral performances by leading orchestras, plus chamber music, oratorio, and solo performances, along with master classes and interviews with master teachers from around the world. Coverage of musical time periods spans Medieval to the 21st century, and performances cover historical recordings from the 1950s up to the most current recordings today.
Dance in Video: Volume I and II
Dance in Video contains dance productions and documentaries by the most influential performers and companies of the 20th century. Selections cover ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance, as well as forerunners of the forms and the pioneers of modern concert dance.
Digital Theatre Plus
Digital Theatre Plus includes recordings of classic, contemporary and international live theatre performances, interviews exploring the dramatic, technical theatre-making process as well as experimental, post-dramatic and applied theatre, and essays, documentaries, lectures, and study guides covering theatre history, context, language analysis, encyclopedia entries, and practical techniques.
Ethnographic Video Online, Royal Anthropological Institute Teaching Edition
Ethnographic Video Online, Royal Anthropological Institute Teaching Edition is a curriculum-aligned collection of videos and segments curated to support the teaching of introductory anthropology courses. Each video and segment within this collection are accompanied by a teaching guide providing background information, lesson plans, and class room exercises and activities. There are a variety of themes that are discussed including family and kinship, gender roles, cultural identity, belief systems and other topics centered around diversity, change, and culture.
Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings
This database provides access to thousands of audio field recordings, interviews, educational recordings, film footage, field notebooks, correspondence, and other resources from a variety of areas of study in collaboration with the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive.
Opera in Video
This searchable and browsable database contains five hundred hours of the most important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries.
Shakespeare's Globe on Screen (2008-2015)
A video archive of performances at the Globe Theatre reconstruction from 2008-2015 and 2016-2018.
Theatre in Video
This browsable and searchable database contains performances of the world's leading plays and film documentaries on the subject of theater in streaming video. Some plays presented in multiple productions exemplifying various interpretations of the text, and technical and cultural differences among the presentations. Stage work of directors and actors are cross-searchable and available for side-by-side comparison. Interviews with directors, designers, writers, and actors, along with excerpts of live performances, provide illustration of the development of texts and the productions.

Free Online Collections

Audio
Video

Dance at Illinois Video Archive
EVIA Digital Archive
The EVIA Digital Archive Project is a collaborative endeavor to create a digital archive of ethnographic field video for use by scholars and instructors. Funded since 2001 by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with significant contributions from Indiana University and the University of Michigan, the Project has been developed through the joint efforts of ethnographic scholars, archivists, librarians, technologists, and legal experts. Beyond the primary mission of digitally preserving ethnographic field video, the EVIA Project has also invested significantly in the creation of software and systems for the annotation, discovery, playback, peer review, and scholarly publication of video and accompanying descriptions.
Jacob's Pillow Dance Interactive
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive is an ever-growing collection of dance videos filmed at Jacob’s Pillow from the 1930s to today. Jacob’s Pillow is a National Historic Landmark, a National Medal of Arts recipient, and home to America’s longest running dance festival.
MIT Global Shakespeares - Video and Performance Archive
National Film Board of Canada
Discover the NFB’s rich online collection
of Indigenous-made films.
New York Public Library's Bhutan Dance Project
The Bhutan Dance Project Video Archive contains 652 videos that were collected and created by Core Culture.
New York Public Library's Jerome Robbins Dance Division Audio and Moving Image Archive
Numeridanse
Numeridanse is a multimedia dance platform. It offers free access to a unique video base: filmed performances, documentaries, interviews, fictions, dance videos. Every single genre, style and form is showcased here: butoh, classical ballet, neo-classical ballet, baroque, Indian, African, flamenco, contemporary, traditional dances, hip-hop, tango, jazz, circus arts, performance, etc.
Theatre Museum of Canada

Help Guides and Tutorials

Creating Music Playlists in Online Audio & Visual Resources
by Music and Performing Arts Library Last Updated Sep 6, 2021 165 views this year

Alexander Street Press Audio: Quick Reference Guide
Alexander Street Press Video: Quick Reference Guide
Alexander Street Press Tutorials
Playlist of ASP video tutorials focusing on using the new platform.
Naxos Music Library Tutorials
The Naxos Music Library Tutorials are a valuable set of website walkthroughs that introduce you to the full functionality of the library focusing on the new interface.