God’s work--at least as it appeared two weeks ago inside an oak-paneled studio on West 44th Street in Manhattan--consisted of the following acts:
A musical archivist removed from its case the sole extant copy of some 1941 session takes of Billie Holiday crooning “All of Me.” A recording engineer received this disc and placed it very gently on a turntable. The studio itself then did the rest: Its speakers cracked with static, a quick piano vamp followed, the horns came in on cue and then there was that voice — you were instantly transported to the eve of World War II.
Five days a week, musical journeys much like that one occur inside this studio, where a small team from Sony Music Entertainment performs the divine digital act of preserving the company’s archives. While the rest of the business spews out the latest candy pop song for consumption on the market, the team from the Sony archives digs into a storehouse of recordings, from Sousa and Caruso to Dylan and Miles Davis, protecting the unique and the endangered from the erosions of the past.
“Everything falls apart,” said Marc C. Kirkeby, an archivist and self-described “professional ear.” Records warp; metal plates rust. “We want to be the last best place in the world where all this stuff can be preserved.”
A musical archivist removed from its case the sole extant copy of some 1941 session takes of Billie Holiday crooning “All of Me.” A recording engineer received this disc and placed it very gently on a turntable. The studio itself then did the rest: Its speakers cracked with static, a quick piano vamp followed, the horns came in on cue and then there was that voice — you were instantly transported to the eve of World War II.
Five days a week, musical journeys much like that one occur inside this studio, where a small team from Sony Music Entertainment performs the divine digital act of preserving the company’s archives. While the rest of the business spews out the latest candy pop song for consumption on the market, the team from the Sony archives digs into a storehouse of recordings, from Sousa and Caruso to Dylan and Miles Davis, protecting the unique and the endangered from the erosions of the past.
“Everything falls apart,” said Marc C. Kirkeby, an archivist and self-described “professional ear.” Records warp; metal plates rust. “We want to be the last best place in the world where all this stuff can be preserved.”
