Eau Claire (WQOW) - A jazz collection worth about $200,000
has made its way to Eau Claire.
UW-Eau
Claire bought a large collection of song sheets and recordings from many big
names in jazz today. The collection includes some very rare copies of songs
that were close to being lost forever.
"I don't know of
any other schools that have something like this," said Professor Ron
Keezer.
UW-Eau Claire officials celebrated
on Saturday, holding an event to culminate the purchase of a large and rare
collection of jazz song sheets and recordings they purchased from big band
organizer Edward Petersen.
"If people don't
understand how it's to be interpreted, then the recording library will support
that. So it gives people not only an opportunity to be exposed to previously
done pieces of work, but how it was done," said Petersen.
The pieces cover decades of jazz
music, and in some cases, the recordings in this collection were saved only
when Petersen offered to refinish the work in exchange for a copy.
"Some of it was
extremely rare in that it was the only copy, and tragically unfortunate that
when their copy of it was no longer playable, that was gone almost forever. And
unless I restored it, it was lost completely," Petersen said.
The song sheets and
album covers will be put on display, while the music is converted to a newer
format.
"The recordings
will be digitized into mp3's, so they'll be able to listen to it on their
computers, or phones, or whatever. So it's there forever!" Keezer said.
The collection
will be named after Dr. John Buckholz, an English professor with UWEC who is
also a long time jazz musician.
UW-Eau Claire bought the collection for
about $75,000. It features more than 900 charts and song sheets in addition to
over 1,000 recordings. Some of the artists whose work is part of the collection
include Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Glenn Miller.
