Maurice Levy Oral History of Music in Pittsburgh Collection
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Selected interviews from the collection are available online. Additional interviews will be added in 2025. Machine-generated transcripts were created during the digitization of this collection and are also available online. Transcripts may contain inaccuracies, misspellings, or omissions. It is recommended that the recording be consulted prior to the content being quoted or used for research.
What's in the entire collection?
The Maurice Levy Oral History of Music in Pittsburgh Collection (OHMP) consists of 326 interviews. All but 7 were conducted by Maurice Levy between 1991 and 2005. Levy interviewed Pittsburghers connected with jazz, classical, popular, folk, traditional, and ethnic music. He interviewed musicians, club owners, impresarios, music critics, DJs, group leaders, administrative staff of local music organizations, and others. Each interview has an associated file located in the Music Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Many files contain added information such as newspaper clippings, supplemental recordings, and publicity materials. These were often given to Levy by the interviewee at the time of the interview. Contact the Music Department to view these files. All 326 recorded interviews are also available for listening in the Music Department. For more information, visit the Music Department's website. The funds to digitize this collection were donated by the Friends of the Music Library in 2023. Their website contains a history of the organization.
About Maurice Levy.
Maurice Levy (1926-2016) volunteered with the Music Department at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh soon after he retired from teaching math at Peabody High School. Maurice considered the Music Department his second home for many years. He developed the Oral History of Music in Pittsburgh (OHMP) project with Kathie Logan, the head of the Music Department at that time. Speaking about the project, Levy said, "The purpose, of course, at the beginning, was the history of music in Pittsburgh. But the history of music—you’re talking about the history of Pittsburgh."
Levy was a proud member of the Friends of the Music Library, an organization that has supported the Music Department at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh since the Department’s founding in 1938. In 2015, the OHMP collection was renamed The Maurice Levy Oral History of Music in Pittsburgh Collection in Levy’s honor.