4 Objects That Clarify the Historical past of Carnegie Hall

Ella Fitzgerald’s glasses. Benny Goodman’s clarinet. A ticket from opening night time in 1891. These objects have lengthy been part of Carnegie Hall’s archive. But now they’re getting a second to shine on the brand new podcast “If This Hall Could Talk.”

In eight episodes, the podcast — produced by Carnegie and the classical radio station WQXR — explores “the legendary and typically quirky historical past of the corridor,” based on the present’s introduction. The Broadway performer Jessica Vosk is the host of the collection, and archivists from the corridor supply commentary.

“Time strikes so rapidly,” mentioned Gino Francesconi, Carnegie’s founding archivist, who’s featured on the podcast. “These are little anchors to remind individuals who we’re, what extraordinary issues have occurred right here and what continues to occur.”

The corridor didn’t commit a lot effort to preserving its 133-year historical past till Francesconi was employed in 1986. The assortment now contains greater than 300,000 objects associated to greater than 50,000 performances and occasions. The overwhelming majority of items had been donated, however archivists have additionally acquired some objects on eBay and different platforms. (One of the pricier acquisitions: a flier for Bob Dylan’s 1961 debut at Carnegie that the corridor purchased from a person in Sweden for $6,000.)

“If This Hall Could Talk,” whose first season concludes subsequent month, additionally explores social and political features of Carnegie’s historical past, together with a 1910 convention on ladies’s suffrage there and a starry 1961 live performance that paid tribute to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

All kinds of artists supply their reflections on the corridor’s historical past within the podcast, together with the jazz singer Samara Joy, the pianist Emanuel Ax, the bass-baritone Davóne Tines and the clarinetist, saxophonist and composer Paquito D’Rivera.

Here are the tales behind 4 objects featured on the present.

Carnegie’s Opening Night Ticket

It was one of many hottest tickets of the century. On May 5, 1891, Carnegie opened with the American debut of Tchaikovsky conducting his personal music. Horse-drawn carriages stuffed the realm round 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, and Carnegie’s fundamental auditorium was packed. Tickets had been $1 and $2.

The corridor, financed by the industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, opened simply as New York was working to determine itself as a cultural heart on par with Europe. “It was an necessary anchor for America’s rising cultural id,” Francesconi mentioned, “as a result of earlier than, all of it needed to come from over there.”

Despite the significance of this occasion, Carnegie didn’t purchase a ticket till 2007.

Ella Fitzgerald’s Glasses

Fitzgerald, often called “the primary woman of music,” made her Carnegie debut in 1947 and carried out on the corridor greater than 40 times. She wore these plastic-frame glasses throughout a 1973 look that later turned the album “Ella Fitzgerald on the Newport Jazz Festival: Live at Carnegie Hall.”

The lenses are so thick, they resemble magnifying glasses. Fran Morris-Rosman, the manager director of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation, mentioned that the singer was at first annoyed about sporting glasses, fearful they’d flip off her followers.

“She all the time tried to be dressed properly and to look good,” mentioned Morris-Rosman, who seems on the podcast.

But her frames finally turned a signature look. Fitzgerald stored about two-dozen pairs at house. “It made her extra like an actual human,” Morris-Rosman mentioned. “She was no glamour woman. She was no diva. She was a singer.”

Horowitz, the eminent pianist, was certainly one of Carnegie’s hottest performers. He made his debut there in 1928 and gave his remaining efficiency in 1986, and appeared greater than 90 times over his lengthy profession.

Horowitz may very well be exacting concerning the placement of his piano onstage; he additionally carried out on his personal Steinway grand reasonably than one of many corridor’s devices. He would ask stagehands to maneuver the piano ever so barely till he was glad with how the sound echoed within the corridor.

“It was only a few inches right here and there and up and down,” Francesconi mentioned.

After Horowitz got here out of retirement in 1965, a gaggle of Carnegie stagehands, realizing that he can be a frequent presence on the corridor, put three screws within the ground of the stage to mark the legs of his piano. During renovations in 1986, the screws had been faraway from the ground and given to the archive.

In the Nineteen Thirties, it was not typical for jazz stars to carry out at Carnegie, however Goodman upended custom along with his 1938 debut. It was one of many first times that viewers members sat to take heed to swing music reasonably than dance to it. And the band was one of many first to function Black and white musicians taking part in collectively onstage.

Goodman’s live performance was credited with serving to deliver new respect to jazz music within the United States. A recording of the efficiency, “The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert,” turned a best-selling album.

The donation of this clarinet by Goodman’s household in 1991 impressed the opening of the Rose Museum on the corridor, the place lots of Carnegie’s treasures are actually on public show.

Rachel Edelson, Goodman’s daughter, says on the podcast that the household needed to “bequeath one thing to the world, to a spot that helped make my father.” And the clarinet was her father’s “solution to categorical himself and to go away behind what he needed to go away behind.”