Arts on 1/8/87 
Featuring Rob Martino
Co-starring the collection & expertise of the librarians in the Newspapers and Microfilm Center

Rob Martino is Philadelphia based drummer, composer, and educator. Rob has studied with some world-class musicians, including Ralph Alessi, Dick Oatts, and Steve Fidyk. He received his bachelor of music from Temple University, and has traveled all over the country with various groups including musical directing the All Hands on Deck show. Rob is currently composing and arranging for the Materia Collective, and his own original music. Currently he is the drummer for renowned chiptune, artist NML Style.

Over three previous concert seasons at the Parkway Central Library, veteran and up-and-coming Philly musicians have explored some questions. What has the Great Migration meant to music in Philadelphia? What happens if librarians commission composers to write music inspired by resources culled from Parkway Central’s subject departments? Musicians answered with concert suites build around children’s books exploring mass incarceration, seedy crime novelettes from Philbrick Hall, historic letters found in our Newspaper and Microfilm Center urging 19th-century African Americans to move to the northern cities, and much more. 

Now, for its fourth season with the eminent Philadelphia Jazz Project, our Mysterious Travelers series returns with Further Investigations to generate more new music inspired by library collections. We’re expounding on last season’s internal investigations theme to include more library departments and more musicians. And it’s still completely free!  Get ready for concerts touching just about every department in the library and every brick in Philly history. This season musicians will explore voodoo and the afterlife with the Education, Philosophy, and Religion Department; railway maps of Philadelphia with the Maps Collection; Brazilian and Cuban percussion with the Music Department; Oscar Wilde, Clemens, Edgar Allan Poe with the Rare Book Department; and more.  One Monday a month, settle into your seat in the Montgomery Auditorium in the Parkway Central Library—the site where musicians met with librarians to find their musical muses—and let the music find you. 

All events in this series are free. All concerts start at 7:00 p.m. and will be held in the Montgomery Auditorium.

The Philadelphia Jazz Project (PJP) works to inspire a network to support, promote, archive, and celebrate the diverse elements within the Philadelphia jazz community, with the larger goal of connecting to the global community. www.philajazzproject.org

Parkway Central Library | Montgomery Auditorium
1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

Accessibility: A wheelchair ramp is located at the Library’s Wood Street entrance, and an elevator for the public is located next to the building’s northeast courtyard.

For more information, full biographies, and the most up-to-date details, visit freelibrary.org or call 215-686-5316.