EXHIBIT STATEMENT

Scoring the Archive brings together undergraduate students at the University of Michigan and the Ann Arbor District Library through the creation of original electronic compositions designed to accompany photographs selected from the library’s archives. These new musical works are inspired by these images and aim to enhance the community’s experience of the local history they represent through an evocative, multimedia listening experience.

The April 2024 iteration of Scoring the Archive features students in Dr. Garrett Schumann’s Composition 222 courses at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. These students have worked with AADL staff since January to select the photographs that serve as their compositions’ subject matter. As with the first Scoring the Archive project, the music these students created represents an innovative reflection on Ann Arbor’s history, as captured by the images held in AADL’s archives. The new electronic compositions enliven the past through the lens of these student composers’ points of view and the digital tools they employed. Scoring the Archives also serves as a uniquely intergenerational work that puts Ann Arbor’s current residents in dialog with decades-old events, places, and people from the local area and nearby regions.

The compositions’ format makes this music maximally accessible, providing people in the AADL community, and beyond, with an opportunity to connect more deeply to these images and their meanings. We hope these compositions inspire you to engage with Ann Arbor’s history in new ways as we all commemorate the city’s bicentennial in 2024.

— Dr. Garrett Sanders Schumann

THE PHOTOGRAPHS

Select any image below to hear the accompanying composition.