RE: The Felicja Blumental Music Center & Library

[Ryna Kedar - Mekatleget for music lib. <ryna_k...>]

On Mon, 11 Jan 1999, Joel Bresler wrote:

> 
> P.S. In a separate thread, might you please tell us about The Felicja
> Blumental Music Center & Library? Thanks!
> 
The Felicja Blumental Music Center & Library is located at 26 Bialik St.
in Tel-Aviv. Our hours are: Sun. Tues.: 9 - 14. Mon. Wed. Thurs.: 12 - 19.
We were previously known as the A.M.L.I. (Americans for a Music Library in
Israel) - Central Music Library. A few years ago, the family of pianist
Felicja Blumental donated the funds for a new building to perpetuate her
memory and encourage the music lovers of Israel.

The library is open to the general public. At the entrance level there is
a small concert hall (about 115 seats) which is used for lectures,
master-classes, recitals, chamber music concerts.
The first floor is circulation. Books on music and scores can be found
here. We are still using a card catalog, but are slowly computerizing our
collection. The emphasis is on classical music, but of course we have a
lot of Israeli music, song books, chazzanut, yiddish, etc. My co-cataloger
is presently computerizing the song books (shironim) so that you will be
able to enter a word from the title of a song and find it. This has
already been done for the Hebrew and Jewish records and cds.
The 2nd floor has an exhibition hall, reference room and our archives.
Our archives house among others, the archives of Bronislaw Huberman,
Menashe Ravina, Joachim Stutschewsky, Beit Levi'im, Golland and many
others.
The 3rd floor is the audio-visual dept. We have about 18,000 records,
just over 2000 cds and 130 video cassettes. Here, as with the music
scores, the emphasis is mainly on classical music, tho we do have some
popular, jazz and of course Israeli music.
I must say that subscribing to this list has been an eye-opener for me; I
had no idea that so much Klezmer music is going on in the US and Canada.
OK, here's my shameless pitch for our under-budgeted library. Any of you
out there who would like their music represented in our collection, we
would be very grateful for any cds you may send us. We really do not have
any of this genre at the library.
If any of you find yourselves in Israel, please come visit. Bialik St. is
very picturesque and historic. Our next door neighbor is Bialik House and
down the street is the Reuben Reuben House.

Lehitra'ot

Ryna Kedar
Head, Acquisitions & Cataloging Division
The Felicja Blumental Music Center & Library
Tel-Aviv, Israel