Music librarians from the United States and Canada gathered in the “Queen City” of Cincinnati, February 28 - March 2, 2024, for the 93rd annual meeting of the Music Library Association. Those of us flying in were greeted at the airport by great displays of megafauna skeletons, highlighting the collections at the Cincinnati Museum. The airport is near Big Bone Lick State Park, known for its rich fossil deposits.
Cincinnati is home to a large German population, and, unsurprisingly, was once known as the “beer capital of the world.” Local delicacies include goetta, and chili served in the “way” system. Cincinnati is also known for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and as the home of Baldwin Pianos (est. 1862). It was also home to musicians Bootsy Collins, the Isley Brothers, and King Records, which launched James Brown’s career.
The conference met at the historic and beautiful Netherland Plaza Hotel. Opened in 1931, this art deco jewel was a favorite haunt of such notables as Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Doris Day made her professional singing debut in the Pavillion Caprice nightclub.
The conference program offerings were as eclectic as the hotel decor. Topics ranged from Open Access initiatives to reparative archival practice to creative recital planning to video game music collections to binder’s volumes to music information architecture to new approaches for instruction to “sweetening” to filk music, and more.
And music was made and heard, of course! Conferees had the opportunity to attend a rare performance of Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles, including atmospheric projections of canyons and galaxies, as part of the Cincinnati Orchestra’s CSO Proof series (incidentally, Stanford’s Memorial Library of Music holds a manuscript of the solo horn movement, Appel interstellar).
Librarians community-sourced a mesmerizing performance of Terry Riley’s In C; and then ‘blew the roof off’ with the astounding MLA Big Band and the MLA Rock Band. Attendees departed the next day, rejuvenated and ready to re-embrace our shared music library challenges.