Things continue to develop here at NaturesTable.net. Just a couple days after the web site went live, I received an email from Scott Schwartz, Director of the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois. Scott informed me they were clued in to what we were up to by my friend and one of C-U’s finest musicians, Paul Kotheimer. Schwartz said he was quite interested in the Nature’s Table Archive Project and wanted to talk about using material from NTAP as part of their collection on the Champaign-Urbana music scene, which was being spearheaded by Assistant Archivist Rory Grennan. After emailing Jeff Machota and Jeff Helgesen, I decided to fly out to C-U this past weekend and get everybody together for an in-person meeting and figure out how to proceed.
Several of us met at Crane Alley this past Saturday afternoon during a torrential downpour: Jeff Machota, Jeff Helgesen, Morgan Powell, Paul Kotheimer, Scott and Rory from the Sousa Archives and myself. We’ve agreed that that there is a lot of common ground here, and we’re all pretty excited that this music and other artifacts from the Table have a chance to be preserved for a long, long time. We’re still working out the details, but we’re all moving together in the same direction now.
I also posted the first of what I hope to be many oral histories of folks who played or worked at the Table. Check out this great interview with Nature’s Table regular Guido Sinclair, recorded in May 1987 by Paul Boyev. Thanks for sharing this recording, Paul.
That’s the latest. I hope to have another recording posted soon. Now if I can just find some time to get the site looking better!
-Sean
A most excellent collaboration! Thank you all for your preservation efforts.
Nice to see this!