Guide to the Northern Virginia Music Center at Reston collection, 1967-1979

Northern Virginia Music Center at Reston C0191

Historical Information

The Northern Virginia Music Center at Reston was established in 1967, and held its first summer camp for young musicians that same year. Initially, its founders aspired to develop the summer camp into a full-faculty, national summer music training program that would eventually become a year-round high school for the performing arts. Although it never developed into a high school, the Center did manage to draw 150 talented student enrollees who came not only from the Greater Washington area, but also from 30 states and a half dozen foreign countries. From 1969-1972, the Music Center faculty and students held regular concerts in Northern Virginia. In 1972, students and faculty traveled to Lausanne, Switzerland, to participate in a series of concerts. By the mid-1970s, the Music Center encountered budget problems, and many board members, including the president, Paul S. Frick, resigned and the Center gradually dissolved. The collection contains some materials from 1978 since some students and faculty from the Center later became associated with the Northern Virginia Youth Symphony Association.

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Scope and Content

The Northern Virginia Music Center at Reston, established in 1967, saw its faculty and students conduct and participate in yearly summer camps and concert series until 1973, when the Center dissolved. This collection documents the Center, and is divided into two series.

Series 1, Music Center Papers, 1967-1979, consists of correspondence, programs, articles, and photographs documenting the Center and its performances. Funding, budget, board minutes, member mailings, photographs, and resumes of musicians visiting the Center constitute the bulk of the materials in series 1. The photographs include both images of performances as well as publicity shots of musicians. This series is arranged alphabetically by subject.

Series 2, Reston Recordings, is a collection of 56 audiotape reels containing Music Center performances by both faculty and students from 1969-1972. This series is arranged alphabetically by the name of the recorded performance.

Series 3 consists of digitized duplicates of the recordings in Series 2. There are audio discs of the recordings as well as digital files on an external drive. The arrangement follows that of Series.

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Arrangement

This collection is arranged by subject.

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Restrictions

Access Restrictions

Only the digitized recordings are available for listening.

Use Restrictions

There may be restrictions on use of the sound recordings.

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Related Material

Special Collections Research Center also holds many other collections on Reston, Virginia.

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Index Terms

Subjects:

Document Types:

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Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Northern Virginia Music Center at Reston collection, Collection #C0191, Special Collections Research Center, George Mason University Libraries.

Acquisition Information

This collection was donated by Loren Bruce of the Reston Historical Trust.

Processing Information

Processed in November 2011 by Kate Grauvogel. EAD markup completed in January, 2012 by Kate Grauvogel and Jordan Patty.

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Contents List