A history of the University of Illinois British Brass Band, 1981 to the present

On November 15, 1981, the University of Illinois British Brass Band performed its first concert, conducted by University of Illinois Assistant Director of Bands James Curnow. The ensemble’s antecedents lay in the brass bands established in Victorian England that were populated by members of the working classes, while its 1980s founding occurred in the national context of an increase in British-style brass band activity in the United States that included the formation of the North American Brass Band Association, dedicated to fostering the British-style brass band movement in the US and Canada. Several key factors contributed to the success and longevity of the University of Illinois British Brass Band, including certain characteristics of the University of Illinois Bands program and the institutional support given to the ensemble. Through analysis and synthesis of personal interviews and archival research, this dissertation reveals the identity of the ensemble as modeled on the traditional British brass band and its typical sound and repertoire, modified by the University of Illinois British Brass Band’s own solutions for particular musical and logistical demands. Providing a significant educational experience for its players (as well as its conductors) and filling an important role in the ensemble offerings of the University of Illinois Bands program, the University of Illinois British Brass Band also represented the University of Illinois statewide by way of its periodic tours and propagated the British-style brass band performance idiom through its more than 90 known performances before its hiatus began in 2011

Democratising Digitisation : Making History with Community Music Societies in Digitally Enabled Collaborations

In post-COVID times we are focusing quite rightly on the plight of our major cultural institutions; but just as important are the local societies that enrich our community life, including amateur music societies, devastated by stringent social-distancing requirements and the health and safety implications of live performance in small spaces. We propose a vision of digitally enabled collaboration that may help these societies rebuild their sense of community and purpose, by working together with academics, archives, and a major US arts centre to reconnect with their past and enrich understanding of their own histories and traditions within a broader national context

Global urban environmental change drives adaptation in white clover

Urbanization transforms environments in ways that alter biological evolution. We examined whether urban environmental change drives parallel evolution by sampling 110,019 white clover plants from 6169 populations in 160 cities globally. Plants were assayed for a Mendelian antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors. Urban-rural gradients were associated with the evolution of clines in defense in 47% of cities throughout the world. Variation in the strength of clines was explained by environmental changes in drought stress and vegetation cover that varied among cities. Sequencing 2074 genomes from 26 cities revealed that the evolution of urban-rural clines was best explained by adaptive evolution, but the degree of parallel adaptation varied among cities. Our results demonstrate that urbanization leads to adaptation at a global scale

Towards a Foundation for Collaborative Digital Archiving with Local Concert-Giving Organisations

The centenaries of former chapters of the British Music Society (BMS), established in 1918, have prompted the governing bodies to take stock of their histories and build on the cataloguing, documentation and preservation of their archival collections. The InterMusE project aims to support this shared ‘instinct to archive’ by capturing and, crucially, linking different forms of data regarding the musical events provided by three of these local concert-giving organisations, beginning with the digitisation of their collections and with a view to producing a dynamic, open-access digital archive. This paper outlines the project team’s approach to establishing a foundation for developing a new kind of digital library for musicology that is both valuable for researchers and fulfils the needs of the societies and their communities. The aim is to empower them to reflect on and celebrate their histories and identities using a range of methodologies in digitally enabled collaboration. By carrying out a series of preliminary scoping exercises, including informal interviews and archival-collection assessments, we are able to compare current archiving and preservation activities across the societies. These conversations bring emerging themes, issues and challenges into focus, raising pertinent questions that will, along with a review of related projects and good practice in co-production, inform our development of transformative tools and techniques for community digitisation projects

Enriching Cultural Heritage Communities : New Tools and Technologies

This paper explores ways in which scholarly skill and expertise might be embodied in tools and sustainable practices that enable communities to create and manage their own digital archives. We focus particularly on tools and practices related to the recording and annotation of digitised materials. The paper is based on co-production practice in two very different kinds of community. Although the communities are different we find that tools designed specifically for one are valuable for others, thus offering the promise of general tools to support commmunty-centred digitisation and potentially also traditional archival practice. (Invited extended and updated version of 'Tools & Technology to Support Rich Community Heritage' BCS conference paper.