Tony Schwartz: 30,000 Recordings Later
SelectsSome people work in sound, others work with sound. Tony Schwartz was the latter. A true recordist - and one of the first. For thirty years (1945-1976), Schwartz created and produced a radio program for WNYC featuring the people and sounds of New York City. He amassed an archive of recordings (now housed in the Library of Congress) including but by no means limited to the sounds of barkers selling their wares, mothers calling children, traffic, folk songs, and cab drivers. There is a democracy of sound in the Tony Schwartz archive. His interest in “the sound around us” treats each layer with tenderness and import. And the result is a celebration of life, the city, and each other.
The Kitchen Sisters are adjacent to the Schwartz lineage. True lovers of sound and creators that work with it. Their documentaries are inspired by the musicality of language and interaction, they collect the sounds of life and unpack their meanings. In Tony Schwartz: 30,000 Recordings Later we hear a meeting of the minds. It expertly features Schwartz’s voice, but his tape is the narration. Listeners hear his perspective unfold through the work, with his spoken musings adding punctuation. It’s a beautiful mix of more abstract recordings (high heels and flute) to the more serene (Night) to the truly sublime (Nancy Grows Up). And the mix is what makes this documentary so special. By blending and sampling Schwartz’s recordings rather than just playing them verbatim, we hear the world as Tony Schwartz did. We’re strapping our recorders to our shoulders and capturing the sounds of the world, for love and posterity.
Alongside The Kitchen Sisters’ documentary, we’ve included several of these raw recordings so listeners can hear how it was built. These recordings are part of the Tony Schwartz collection at the Library of Congress and made available as part of the Citizen DJ project, from Brian Foo. You can actually remix these recordings into your own blend at:
https://citizen-dj.labs.loc.gov/loc-tony-schwartz/remix/?i=64963&s=194409&d=mpc&p=90hI1
Some people work in sound, others work with sound. Tony Schwartz was the latter. A true recordist - and one of the first. For thirty years (1945-1976), Schwartz created and produced a radio program for WNYC featuring the people and sounds of New York City. He amassed an archive of recordings (now housed in the Library of Congress) including but by no means limited to the sounds of barkers selling their wares, mothers calling children, traffic, folk songs, and cab drivers. There is a democracy of sound in the Tony Schwartz archive. His interest in “the sound around us” treats each layer with tenderness and import. And the result is a celebration of life, the city, and each other.
The Kitchen Sisters are adjacent to the Schwartz lineage. True lovers of sound and creators that work with it. Their documentaries are inspired by the musicality of language and interaction, they collect the sounds of life and unpack their meanings. In Tony Schwartz: 30,000 Recordings Later we hear a meeting of the minds. It expertly features Schwartz’s voice, but his tape is the narration. Listeners hear his perspective unfold through the work, with his spoken musings adding punctuation. It’s a beautiful mix of more abstract recordings (high heels and flute) to the more serene (Night) to the truly sublime (Nancy Grows Up). And the mix is what makes this documentary so special. By blending and sampling Schwartz’s recordings rather than just playing them verbatim, we hear the world as Tony Schwartz did. We’re strapping our recorders to our shoulders and capturing the sounds of the world, for love and posterity.
Alongside The Kitchen Sisters’ documentary, we’ve included several of these raw recordings so listeners can hear how it was built. These recordings are part of the Tony Schwartz collection at the Library of Congress and made available as part of the Citizen DJ project, from Brian Foo. You can actually remix these recordings into your own blend at:
https://citizen-dj.labs.loc.gov/loc-tony-schwartz/remix/?i=64963&s=194409&d=mpc&p=90hI1