The stereotypical definition of a librarian is lost on Rebecca Beavers. Seated in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Library, located directly behind the stage of Symphony Hall, she says, “An orchestra librarian is a musician. Assistant Principal Steve Sherrill, Assistant John Wildermuth and myself are really performance librarians who work behind the scenes to help the players perform to the best of their abilities.”
In addition to overseeing a collection of nearly 2,500 pieces of music that the Orchestra either owns, are on permanent loan or rented from publishers, and preparing all of the music that the Orchestra performs (“it’s a bunch of notes!” jokes Beavers), she is president of the Major Orchestra Librarians’ Association (MOLA).
MOLA represents more than 400 performance librarians from nearly 250 professional performance organizations around the world. “This is my second year of a three-year term on the Board of Directors,” she says, “and as president, I ensure that we provide the highest quality of service to the performing arts, and continue to work with publishers to achieve the highest standards in music performance materials.”
Next month Beavers travels to London for the group’s 29th annual conference, May 13-16, at the Henry Wood Hall, the city’s premiere rehearsal and recording studio. This year’s theme is Working Together, a subject she knows very well, “stressing the importance of the working relationships between composers, publishers, editors, conductors and librarians.
“An orchestra librarian wears many hats and works with virtually everyone,” explains Beavers. “Our main efforts are preparing the orchestra music, a process that begins months in advance of the first rehearsal: The strings parts are marked with the bowings; all parts are proofed — some pieces are notorious for errors — and then corrected and edited; page turns are fixed; and score bindings are repaired.”
“The library collaborates with many departments,” she points out, “the artistic staff on repertoire planning and providing Orchestra performance history reports processed from a database that I maintain; furnishing instrumentations and timings of works to the personnel manager, stage manager and the operations team; and giving full scores to the producers for our recording sessions. Much time is also spent in researching editions of works and communicating with conductors about their preferences,” an especially daunting task in light of myriad interpretations of the repertoire.
A typical day on the job? “There isn’t one,” she laughs, “and it is never boring! I fondly refer to the library as the ‘kitchen of the organization.’ We are the chefs and this is the place where the music is prepared and plated for the players, and where everyone comes to see what’s cooking on the stove.”
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Karl Schnittke is the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s publications editor.
