The Music Beat: These Students Are Rocking Out in the Library

“We were thinking, ‘What would be great to pair that with?’ And they had mentioned URecords,” Thorud, a multimedia teaching and learning librarian, said.

Gillilan, an undergraduate student success librarian, and Thorud reached out to the group during the summer to see if they would be interested in creating an exhibit for a gallery space in Clemons.

University Records president Carina Velocci curated the exhibit with the club’s vice president Sara Bastianelli, who doubles as a photographer for the shows University Records helps book. Bastianelli’s concert photography, along with posters Velocci designed, feature prominently in the exhibit. Gillilan, Thorud and associate librarian Jason Evans Groth helped University Records organize the exhibition.

“This was a really interesting way for us to center the visual aspect of what we do,” Velocci, a fourth-year student, said. “We are, at the core, a music club, but we’re for creative people of all ilk.”

In addition to creating performance opportunities, University Records loans equipment, connects bands in need of a drummer with drummers looking for a band and helps musicians promote their gigs.

Despite being a musician herself, Velocci primarily designed concert posters for bands affiliated with University Records before branching into performing. Even with that background, she was unsure of what to include in the exhibit.

“We really do think of ourselves as very audio-based, so we were trying to think of a visual component, and then we remembered, we have these really cool photographs and these show posters that kind of represent us,” Velocci said.

The  space, called Gallery 4, in Clemons is reserved for student work. “The Clem Exhibition” is the first student-curated project housed there.

While Velocci, a UVA studio art and art history double major, has shown her work in galleries, it was her first time curating an exhibition with items she did not create.

“It’s very different when you bring someone else’s work into conversation with it,” Velocci said.

The items in the current exhibit offer a look at a thriving music scene at UVA, one that Velocci said encompasses everything from low-key acoustic sets to heavy metal shows. It includes posters, photos, a documentary focused on UVA’s music scene and music documentaries that students can check out from the library.

University Records hosted a live acoustic show as part of the exhibition’s opening week, and regularly puts on similar shows at 1515 on the Corner. The group recorded the five sets performed in Clemons and will send the mixed versions back to the musicians for their use – as they do with 1515 live sets.

“They’re meant to be really intimate. We compare them to NPR Tiny Desk concerts,” Velocci said.

Another regular feature of University Records’ programming includes audio workshops, where students learn how to record, edit, mix and master songs. The club held a workshop during the exhibition’s opening week in Clemons Library.

“The workshop, which was completely led by the University Records folks, was a chance to show their peers what kind of work they’re doing,” Groth said. “They were showing how to use this software that may not be available to everyone, but then they started answering more ethereal questions about the songwriting process.”

The Clemons exhibition also shows off audio recording equipment available in the Robertson Media Center for students to use, whether it’s for an assignment or a personal project.

“The audio studio here and our desire to make that accessible for people who want to do this work, both with assignments and for creative work, corresponds with what University Records has been doing for all the years that they’ve been doing it,” Groth said.