Forty years after the School of Music and the Office of Public Information recorded a Christmas program for a television-viewing audience, it is again available to the general public just in time for the holiday season!
Category: New in the Archives
John Philip Sousa hits the beach at new exhibit!
Sousa hits the beach as part of our new exhibit “America and Sousa’s Band Through the Photographic Lens of Charles Strothkamp”
Charles Strothkamp (1896-1983) was born and raised in Manhattan, New York. At the age of fifteen he began studying clarinet, and nearly fifteen years later joined the Sousa Band as fourth clarinet for its 1926 tour which included extended performances at Atlantic City’s Steele Pier, Philadelphia’s Willow Grove Park, and concerts throughout the New England, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states. After Sousa’s death in March 1932, Charles went on to study stenography and typewriting at New York’s Drake School of Business and eventually took a position as railway postal clerk with the United States Postal Service. He remained with the postal service for thirty years and retired in 1965.
Throughout his music and postal careers, Charles was an avid amateur photographer who chronicled his travels with the Sousa Band, his parents on summer trips, and everyday life in New York City. As he travelled with the Sousa ensemble his camera meticulously documented the candid off-stage life of his colleagues between 1926 and 1930. This exhibit explores the humorous exploits of the Sousa Band as it travelled across America at the close of the roaring twenties and the beginning of the Great Depression.
The exhibit is part of the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music‘s American Music Month Celebration and it’s located in the Harding Band Building, 1103 S. Sixth Street, Champaign, IL.
University Archives Acquires Hal Bruno Jr. Papers
In September of 2012, the University of Illinois Archives officially acquired the personal papers of Harold (Hal) Robinson Bruno, Jr. (1928-2011), University alumnus (’50), former political editor of Newsweek (1960-1978), and former political director of ABC News from 1978 to 1997. Bruno also took a turn in front of the camera when he served as the moderator of the boisterous 1992 vice presidential debate between Dan Quayle, Al Gore, and James Stockdale. He also hosted the weekly radio program Hal Bruno’s Washington on ABC Radio from 1981-1999. Continue reading “University Archives Acquires Hal Bruno Jr. Papers”
New Website
It’s been quite a process, but over the past few months, we’ve managed to migrate our website! We’ll spare you the gory technical details. Suffice it to say that, when Library IT politely informed us that we were consuming over 75% of the available space on the Library’s web server, we knew it was time to move.