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Randy Weston archive provides glimpse into jazz history

“Randy Weston African Rhythms.” Photo credit: Carol Friedman

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Harvard Library, in collaboration with the Jazz Research Initiative, the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, has acquired pianist and composer Randy Weston’s personal archive of musical scores, recordings, correspondence, posters, and other materials that offer a rare glimpse into the world of an artist, an ambassador, and a businessman.

The project, the first major collaboration between Harvard Library and the Jazz Research Initiative at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, will make available Weston’s archive of recordings and documents for scholars and the public to experience free of charge. The archive will be of interest to scholars of music, of African American culture, and of the history of the relationship between Americans and Africans for many generations. Researchers and scholars will be able to use the collection once it is fully processed in the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, where the collection will be housed.