I led an unusual guided listening today.
I reached into my shelves for some CDs – yes, CDs – that haven’t shown up on streaming services yet. My vocal jazz collection is pretty extensive and I was able to pretty easily find a half dozen albums that I knew I couldn’t stream. (Actually, I was delighted to hear that some have appeared on streaming. Now I can finally stream Moss!) In addition to Moss, I played something from the first New York Voices album, two Gold Company tracks from different albums, and the PM Singers singing “I Hear Music”.
It’s funny: having access to nearly everything doesn’t necessarily make the good stuff more available. Sometimes it makes it harder to even find the good stuff amidst the millions and millions of options.
Playing vintage records that haven’t made it to streaming is a great feeling, and affirms me even keeping all these CDs. I know that there are plenty of albums in other genres besides vocal jazz that haven’t made the leap to streaming, and finding ways to make them available to students is a real mission.
The only problem: it took me quite a while to figure out how to play a CD at all in my technologically advanced classroom. Oops.