Travelogue: Salt Lake City
The Music Library Association held its 95th annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, February 25-28, 2026. After last year’s virtual conference it was certainly a treat to see colleagues and friends in person, to “talk shop,” engage in presentations, and spend some community-building social time together. Stanford attendees included Tamar Barzel, Freja Cole, Ray Heigemeir (yours truly), Kevin Kishimoto, and our special guest, Dr. Benedikt Lodes, who is visiting from the Austrian National Library.
The noon organ recital at the Tabernacle in Temple Square was an unexpected highlight of my visit to SLC. On entering, the organ’s cherry-wood cabinetry and imposing gilt-forward pipes were impressive even before a note was played. The building, long familiar to this writer from watching the Tabernacle Choir holiday shows on TV over the decades, sits across from the Latter-Day Saints temple (currently under renovation though access is also restricted to LDS church members). The organist demonstrated the hall's impressive acoustics first by slowly tearing a sheet of paper, followed by dropping some pins on a wooden table, plink plink plink. The domed ceiling was lit in cerulean and slowly morphed through a rainbow of colors, all controlled by the performer (as if they didn’t have enough to do!). Youtube provides numerous clips of the organ in action, including this atmospheric Halloween performance of Bach's Toccata in D minor.
The conference sponsored a visit to the Salt Lake City Public Library housed in their massive Moshe Safdie-designed building complex. Spectacular views were to be had from the roof garden, where working beehives (Utah being the Beehive State) produce honey. The enviable makerspace includes a leather workshop, a recording studio, and equipment for sewing, embroidery, soldering, 3d printing, and more. If that isn’t enough, you can shop for houseplants, participate in the seed swap library, get a glow up at the hair salon, and visit the library store and café. See more images on the architect’s website.
At the Music OCLC Users Group pre-conference, Kevin and Freja presented “Using Open Data to Catalog Reggae 45s,” highlighting metadata work on the Dijkstra Black music collection. Conference buzz was that Freja and Kevin are metadata rock stars (no surprise there!).
So what do music librarians meet about, anyway? Here is a sampling of topics: How catalogers provide access to dance materials in libraries; ADA Title II and library websites; increasing Indigenous representation from Indigenous perspectives; lesson design; strategies for community-centered, culturally sensitive metadata practices; genealogical research resources for identifying musicians; the intersection of Korean drama, K-Pop, and classical music; celebrating the 100th birthday of Celia Cruz; grappling with fascism and white supremacy in heavy metal collections; dance research sources; the American Composers Alliance archives; documenting and indexing African American spirituals; interpreting queer archival records from the disco era; the Western canon, Americanism, and segregation in music collections in the early 20th century; unorthodox engagement with library materials; archiving Anthony Braxton; opera in Washington, D.C.; and, dating 19th-century sheet music.
A Friday-evening event centered on Deep Listening. Participants were guided in exploration and performance of Pauline Oliveros' "The Tuning Meditation," "The Rock Piece," and "The Heart Chant."
After the information overload, the “paws and relax/animal therapy hour” was worth its weight in dog treats. Speaking of treats, while SLC isn’t known for a regional cuisine as far as I could gather, you can enjoy a “dirty soda,” a sugary concoction involving soda, juices, and flavored creams. Mercifully the craft beer scene is also alive and well (and more to my taste, for sure!)