Last night in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of
Music, baritone Thomas Hampson offered one of the most interesting
preview events I have ever attended. The preview was for his Song of America recital,
which he will give tonight to inaugurate the 30th anniversary season of
San Francisco Performances; and it was entitled "Song of America – A
Diary." Literally speaking, this was probably not the most accurate
title. With my credentials as a veteran of Silicon Valley, I could make
a case that "technology pitch" would probably have been more accurate a
choice than "diary;" but Hampson is clearly so personally invested in
this effort that what turned out to be a demonstration of a technology
about to be launched was tightly woven with his own personal narrative
of his involvement in the project.
The technology was
developed under the Song of America Project, which is a product of
Hampson's collaboration with the Library of Congress under support from
the Hampsong Foundation. The primary "deliverable" will be a Song of
America Web site, whose URL (www.SongOfAmerica.net)
has already been reserved but which currently offers only a "Coming
soon!" page. Hampson spent about an hour with his Macintosh laptop
showing us all what to expect, after which he introduced three of his
major Library of Congress colleagues: Susan H. Vita, Chief of the Music
Division, Loras John Schissel, Senior Musicologist in the Music
Division, and Suzanne Hogan, Special Assistant to the Librarian of
Congress. Brad Rosenstein, Curator of Exhibitions & Programs at the
San Francisco Museum of Performance & Design then moderated a
question-and-answer session with the audience. Hampson had more than
his fair share of encounters with Murphy's Law while giving his
demonstration; and, as a skilled performer who seems to be able to work
his way through any adverse situation, he always knew how to keep the
presentation moving forward. If his personal enthusiasm led him down
more paths of digression than I could count, he always returned to the
main path, keeping the entire evening on message.
That message was
that, for Hampson, the scholarship behind his preparing American songs
for his performing repertoire has been (and continues to be) a wild and
wooly adventure, as exciting and satisfying as performing the music
itself before an audience. Hampson now sees the Internet as the perfect
venue for having those adventures; and the Library of Congress
has committed itself to enabling such adventures in a variety of topic
areas. Now, with the support of the Hampsong Foundation, it will soon
be enabling those adventures that most interest Hampson's professional
side as a performer.
I have sat through so many technical pitches
that it is hard for me to approach any of them without a thick skin of
skepticism. From a musicological point of view, they tend to follow a
ternary form: a gee-whiz exposition, followed by a "development"
section about monetization and business strategies, concluding with a
gee-whiz recapitulation. Somewhere during the follow-up questioning, it
emerges that this is all vaporware waiting to become substance once the
business plan is up and running.
Last night's presentation did
not follow this pattern, nor did it need to. That Library of Congress
commitment to enabling scholarly adventures is part of both its charter
and its budget, and Hampson's foundation can supplement that budget in
the interest of those musical adventures that mean so much to him. This
is what many of us have wanted from the Internet since those early dark
days (about fifteen years ago) when academics were raking in government
grants for digital library projects that never seemed to have
professionally qualified librarians (or any other form of "context
expert") on the research staff. Will this really be the dawn of a new
day? Who knows?
The good news is that the Hampsong Foundation has
offered to help recruit beta testers when the first round of content is
opened to the Internet. Hampson invited those wishing to volunteer for
beta testing to send their request to songofamerica@hampsong.org.
I intend to be one of those volunteers. There is not a review that I
write that does not depend on some level of adventurous research; so I
have a dog in this hunt, whether Hampson (who may well be on the
receiving end of what I write) likes it or not! I also need to do this
out of a sense of fairness. I have put a lot of effort into writing
about how the Internet offers concert experiences through cyberspace.
If there is now an opportunity to enhance those concert experiences by
seeking out useful context through the Internet, that should be
recognized as yet another path towards our all being better listeners
and examined as such.
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