The Season 63 Masterworks Series is made possible by the Brian and Patricia Giese Foundation.
Click here to view the Program Booklet for this performance.
We’re very excited to welcome Melanie Zeck, PhD, MLIS as our guest lecturer for our first concert of the season, “Pasajes (Passages)” at Maryland Hall. Ticketholders can attend the event for free!
Melanie will tell attendees more about the work of contemporary composer and Pulitzer Prize winning artist Tania León, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, and the gorgeous work of Black composer William Grant Still. If you aren’t yet familiar with the work of Brian Ganz, she will explain his ties to Maryland and Annapolis and about his famous effort to play all the works of Frédéric Chopin! Purchase tickets to the concert on our website or by calling our Box Office at 410-263-0907.
Melanie is a reference librarian at the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center (AFC), where she provides extensive informational support to students and researchers on topics related to music and folklife around the world.
Zeck’s own research focuses on the historiography of music in the African Diaspora. Her recent scholarship has been published by ABC-CLIO, A-R Editions, and W.W. Norton. Her co-authored monograph, The Transformation of Black Music (with Center for Black Music Research [CBMR] founder, the late Samuel A. Floyd Jr.) was published by Oxford University Press in 2017, and during her fifteen-year tenure at the CBMR, Zeck served as Managing Editor of its flagship publication, the Black Music Research Journal.
Before focusing her career on music librarianship, Zeck was a bassoonist. Highlights include: soloing with her hometown orchestra on the Concerto in F Major by J.N. Hummel and performing this same concerto in a master class with Leonard Sharrow. She also built and played a renaissance bass rackett (precursor to the bassoon) and demonstrated it at a master class given by William Waterhouse.
photo: Ceylon Mitchell / M3 Mitchell Media & Marketing