Music

Making wonderful music has always been part of Ann Rabson’s life.  Now in her fourth decade as a songwriter, recording artist, and performer, she is visited by Debby Klein and shares her thoughts and her music on CRRL Presents, a Central Rappahannock Regional Library production.

This interview airs beginning August 29.
Anthony Campbell, with his lovely voice and personality continues to delight audiences wherever and whenever he performs. In this CRRL Presents interview, we learned about his music, his Today show win, and his plans and dreams for a future which he now enjoys.

This interview airs beginning July 11.
Educator, musician, and former member of the award-winning blues group “Saffire—the Uppity Blues Women,” Gaye Adegbalola shares her past as a civil rights activist and a deep lover of music with Debby Klein on CRRL Presents, a Central Rappahannock Regional Library production.

This interview airs beginning May 9.
Bob Gramann has many interests, but music, both writing and performing, is certainly at the forefront. Share his love for music and learn about the art of guitar building when he meets with Debby Klein on CRRL Presents.

This interview airs beginning November 9.
With a dazzling voice, a horse named Wagner, and some clever props, Toni Crowder as Tessitura, the Opera Clown, is introducing young audiences to the world of opera. She gives us a taste of her performance in an interview with Debby Klein on CRRL Presents, a Central Rappahannock Regional Library production.  

The safety of my collection has been one of my largest concerns as music has made the digital transition.  With CDs and vinyl, you may damage or lose one or more albums and unless your entire collection is stolen, it's unlikely that you'll lose access to all of it at once.  Digital music is a different matter, however.  Unless you've backed up all of your songs to a secondary storage device, one bad electrical storm could separate you from your tunes forever (and remember, backing up means having two copies of each file, not just storing your music on a single portable hard drive by itself).  With the push toward cloud (or distributed) computing and storage, new services are cropping up to help us not only back up our music offsite, but which allow us to take our music with us wherever we go.  

One service that I've been using for years is mp3tunes.com, to which I pay a monthly subscription fee and in turn receive space online to backup all my music to and the ability to stream it to any computer.  New contenders include Google Music (currently in beta testing), iCloud from Apple (coming this fall with their iOS 5 update for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch), and Amazon Cloud Drive, which is available now.

This interview airs beginning April 13.
Dr. Rachel Clay’s biography, The Orioles; Second String Albert “Diz” Russell, documents the history of the legendary vocal group, the Orioles, and reflects on the great influence of its members and rhythm and blues in the history of American music. Debby Klein joins Dr. Clay in her home on CRRL Presents, a Central Rappahannock Regional Library production.

Music on the Steps, CRRL's popular summer concert series, starts on Monday, June 7, with Blues woman Ann Rabson.

All Music on the Steps concerts are held on Mondays at 7pm, on the steps of the Headquarters Library in downtown Fredericksburg. The Free Lance-Star recently published an article on the series.

Other performers include:
June 14 - Laurie Rose Griffith and Pete Mealy
June 21 - Dixie Power Trio
June 28- Trent Wagler & the Steel Wheels
July 12 - The Company Store Band
July 19 - Homegrown String Band

Find out more about Music on the Steps and this year's performers.

National Music Week is celebrated the first week in May and this year's theme is "Music ... A Key to the Future."
The CRRL will celebrate with recitals in the Headquarters Library lobby every evening. Posters and original music scores created by local music students will also decorate the stairwells.
The CRRL has participated in this annual event for many years, earning an Award of Merit from the National Federation of Music Clubs.

On Tuesday, April 20, 2010, Gardner Campbell of Baylor University will give a talk on the King of Rock 'n' Roll. This lecture, part of the university's Great Lives series, is free and open to the public.
For more on the life of Elvis Presley check out this list of materials recommended by the reference staff of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library.