DNCE 3210: Jazz Technique 5

Linda Talcott Lee teaches a wide variety of jazz styles including classical jazz, lyrical, Latin, street, and musical theatre.

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start your research by picking a topic and learning about scholarly articles and other types of sources

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General research tools

  • ProQuest Historical Newspapers is an archive of over 60 newspapers from all over the country and the world, including leading publications from jazz and theatre hubs like New York, Los Angeles, and Washington DC. These are helpful resources for reviews of records and performances, obituaries, and other articles that were contemporary with the performances and works you're researching.

Find Dance and Musical Theater digital, print, and media resources

Find streaming Music and Dance media

Why use streaming media from the Libraries?

YouTube and Spotify have lots of great content, but there are a few drawbacks to them:

  • Particularly in the case of YouTube, the information about the content (for example: dates, performer names, performance locations, etc.) may not be entirely accurate or complete. Anyone can upload content to YouTube, so when you rely on this resource, you're relying on the poster to describe the content accurately. You don't have to worry about this when it comes to Libraries resources - the information about the content (also called the metadata) is always accurate!
  • Videos on YouTube can disappear with no warning. In the Libraries, we ensure that you have reliable access to audio and video content that we purchase or to which we subscribe.
  • Liner notes (often found in the booklets that come with CDs and sometimes accompanying DVDs) can be fantastic resources, and some of our Libraries databases provide access to PDF versions of these. Liner notes can provide background information about artists, the history of particular pieces, translations, and more. These materials aren't available through YouTube and Spotify.

Some relevant streaming media databases available through the Libraries include the following:

Interested in finding more Libraries streaming media resources? Check out the "Find Streaming Audio" and "Find Streaming Video" tabs of the Music-Related Databases Guide.

Find Music resources

Looking for music-specific scholarship, primary sources, and reviews that can help you understand how jazz and musical theatre was perceived and disseminated? Resources like music encyclopedias, newspapers, and digital magazine archives can help!

Explore background information, composer and performer biographies, and historical context in music-specific encyclopedias:

Start with:

Oxford Music Online is a scholarly source for trustworthy and thorough background information about styles of music, composers, performers, and more. In addition to entries about musical theatre, jazz, jazz's many subgenres, and many of the choreographers and performers you're discussing in class this semester, there's an excellent entry on "Musical Theater Dance" by dance historian Claude Conyers that may be of interest to you - and this entry is accompanied by a fantastic bibliography of other relevant resources!

Next, explore:

Find primary sources

...like record and performance reviews, obituaries, and contemporary opinion pieces in the following databases - these resources will give your research depth and richness:

Interested in finding more music-specific scholarship, primary sources, and streaming media? Check out the Finding Music Materials Guide.

Last Updated: Nov 20, 2023 10:10 AM