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May 17, 2004
Grateful Dead foundations help preserve UCSC
archive of renowned composer Lou Harrison
By Scott Rappaport
Two foundations established by members of the Grateful Dead have contributed
funds to help preserve the archive of the late composer Lou Harrison
at UCSC.
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The late Lou Harrison, shown in August 1991, above, on the occasion
of his first gift to his archive in Special Collections at McHenry
Library. Photo by Rita Bottoms
The Grateful Dead
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The Rex Foundation, founded by the Grateful Dead and friends in 1984,
and the Unbroken Chain Foundation, established in 1997 by Phil and Jill
Lesh, have each donated $10,000 to UCSC to support the Lou Harrison
Archive in the University Library Special Collections.
Harrison chose to establish his archive at UCSC over a decade ago
because of his 50-year residency in Santa Cruz and his longtime association
with the university. After he passed away on February 2, 2003, Harrison’s
will designated the campus as the site for all of his remaining artistic
materials, including his extensive collection of musical instruments.
“The Grateful Dead all knew and recognized the contributions of
Lou Harrison, and they performed on programs with him and Michael Tilson
Thomas at the San Francisco Symphony,” noted Fredric Lieberman,
professor of music at UCSC and coauthor with UCSC professor Leta Miller
of Lou Harrison: Composing a World, a biography published by
Oxford University Press in 1998 (paperback reissue, University of Illinois
Press, 2004). A CD of Harrison’s music included in that publication
was made possible by the generosity of Phil Lesh and David Gans, who
edited and mastered the disc.
Internationally recognized for his highly inventive and original work,
Harrison was the last living link in a tradition of American experimental
music that includes Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Virgil Thomson, and
John Cage. He is most well known for his fusion of Asian and Western
musical styles and development of new percussion instruments. Harrison
left behind a legacy of more than 300 compositions, and his music was
frequently featured over the past decade in San Francisco Symphony programs,
as well as on the San Francisco record label New Albion.
Lieberman approached both foundations for assistance after learning
that Harrison’s estate might be forced to sell archival materials
to meet remaining taxes and legal costs. He hoped to enable the UCSC
library to purchase the most essential and endangered archival material
from the estate in an effort to maintain the fullest possible integrity
of the archive.
The UCSC archive currently includes more than 600 reel-to-reel tapes
that date as far back as 1949, containing personal copies of performances
of Harrison’s music that are almost all unreleased. It also contains
some unique one-off acetate discs of recordings by the Harrison and
Cage percussion ensemble in the early 1940s, which need immediate attention
and preservation.
“When I learned of the perilous state of the Harrison archive
and the potential danger that it might have to be sold, I immediately
asked both foundations for assistance,” Lieberman said. “The
Rex Foundation has recently begun funding projects involving digital
preservation, and this is one project they responded to.”
“In recent years, the Dead have explored technology in their own
recordings and looked at the problems of archiving the music in their
own vault,” Lieberman noted. “Mickey Hart was also recently
appointed to the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center at
the Library of Congress, where he leads a committee on the digitization
and preservation of the center's huge collections.”
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