Djan­go Rein­hardt, one of Europe’s finest jazz gui­tar play­ers, would have turned 100 on Jan­u­ary 24. It’s fair­ly aston­ish­ing to think that he mas­tered the gui­tar as he did, ele­vat­ing it to a lead jazz instru­ment, despite being self taught, and hav­ing lost the use of two fin­gers in a fire. (More on that in the LA Times.) Above, we fea­ture Djan­go and his group, Quin­tette du Hot Club de France, per­form­ing “J’At­tendrai” (I Will Wait) in 1939. As you’ll note, he only has two fin­gers mov­ing on the frets.

The Notre Dame March­ing Band hit the field (a real field), where they per­formed OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass.” The per­for­mance was arranged by Notre Dame’s direc­tor of bands, Dr. Ken Dye. And it was all record­ed live on the spot. You can watch the video in a larg­er for­mat here. Inci­den­tal­ly, if you’re not famil­iar with OK Go’s music, you can watch them per­form an acoustic ver­sion here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Once they were part of the counter cul­ture. Now they’re get­ting the red car­pet treat­ment in the estab­lish­ment. (Not that I have a prob­lem with that!) Last night, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and oth­ers per­formed in the East Room of the White House. It was all part a pro­gram called “A Cel­e­bra­tion of Music from the Civ­il Rights Move­ment,” which will air on PBS on Feb. 11 at 8 p.m. ET. Above we have an audio record­ing of Dylan per­form­ing the time­less “The Times They Are A‑Changin.” You can also watch a sam­ple of the oth­er per­for­mances here.

Great find by Robert B., who cap­tions this clip: “the teenage Glenn Gould at his Cana­di­an home.” Gould is play­ing here J.S.Bach’s Par­ti­ta #2. Give this a minute to get going. It’s a pret­ty awe­some dis­play of Gould’s tal­ents. Thanks for shar­ing Robert…

As we’ve men­tioned in the past, Archive.org hosts some won­der­ful free, pub­lic domain media. Many of their clas­sic films appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Movies. And they also pro­vide access to lots of free pub­lic domain music (includ­ing a large Grate­ful Dead con­cert archive). Thanks to a new site, Dewey Music, you can now sort through this exten­sive music cat­a­logue with greater ease and find the free gems faster. Dewey Music was cre­at­ed by six indus­tri­ous col­lege stu­dents, and we thank them.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Vladimir Horowitz, one of the great pianists of the 20th cen­tu­ry, left Rus­sia to set­tle in the Unit­ed States in 1939. But, once the Cold War thawed, he famous­ly returned home and played before rapt audi­ences. What we have here, I believe, is Horowitz play­ing Mozart’s Sonata in C Major dur­ing a 1986 recital Moscow. A beau­ti­ful piece. For good mea­sure, I’ve also added Horowitz play­ing Chopin’s 2nd Piano Sonata at the White House. Both clips have been added to our YouTube favorites.