Philadelphia owes its contemporary urban musical landscape to the groundwork laid by the African American communities that began to emigrate en mass to Philadelphia after 1916. The story is little told, and under valorized by civic and artistic institutions despite a vibrant and living tradition. The Free Library’s Music department seeks to center the artistic genius of its community, and firmly to place Black lives and Black arts at the center of discourse.

In commissioning new works, the library is directly fostering new knowledge. In providing a performance venue for a musical non-profit, the library is not only providing the raw material and librarian talent for this non-profit to thrive, but is also expanding the creative economy for the musicians we program. Finally, the Music Department is a conservatory quality music library. In hosting top local talent, we are acting as a conservatory would in showing off the summit of the study of music for audiences and students.

The nine concerts of the 2015-2016 season reached nearly 2000 library patrons across race, class, and generational lines. Many of these patrons were unaware of the richness of the Music Department’s collections or the acoustic sweetness of the Montgomery Auditorium. Musicians are increasingly inquiring about performing. The collaboration on this series has led to planning for the next season in which we will commission composers to write new music inspired by nine distinct special collections of the Parkway Central Library.