LAPL Blog
Alan Westby, Librarian, Art, Music & Recreation Department

Chinatown: Film Score Sets the Mood
The success and lasting popularity of the 1974 neo-noir classic, Chinatown, are often credited to Robert Towne's
Eastern and Western Sounds Combined: Korean Composer Yun Isang
The library has recently added its first scores by the Korean composer Yun Isang (윤이상 / 尹伊桑) to our collection.
New Musical Scores by Women Composers
Women's History Month provides an opportunity to highlight some of the new scores in our collection by women composers. Many of these scores are the first works by these composers in our music collection.
A Tribute to Maria Callas: Scenes from Verdi's "La Traviata" & Bellini's "Norma"
Read, Write, and Play Music at the Library
Song a Day for a Month Concert
Julie d'Aubigny: La Maupin and Early French Opera
LGBT Pride Month gives us an opportunity to discover a fascinating character from the early days of French opera.
The Music of Tôru Takemitsu and Japanese New Wave Cinema
As we observe Asian Pacific American Heritage Month at Los Angeles Public Library, this is a good occasion to look at some of the interesting examples of Japanese cinema available to our patrons, particularly those featuring scores by composer Tôru Takemitsu.
Ruth Crawford Seeger: Musical Ultra-Modernist and Folklorist
Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) is widely recognized both as the most important American woman composer of the Twentieth Century, and as a major figure in the study and preservation of American folk music.
Scott Joplin, Treemonisha and American Opera
2017 marks the hundredth anniversary of the death, at the age of 49, of Scott Joplin, one of America's first great composers, and the composer of arguably the first important American opera: Treemonisha.