“Songbirds: A Documentary” Director Dagan Beckett graduated from UTC in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in music
“Songbirds: A Documentary,” an Emmy Award-winning story directed by a UTC alum about the world’s most extensive collection of vintage guitars, will have its premiere UTC screening at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 20.
The Music Division of the UTC Department of Performing Arts will host the event in the Fine Arts Center’s Roland Hayes Concert Hall.
The documentary’s director, Dagan Beckett, received a bachelor’s degree in music from UTC in 2012 and will attend—along with producer Irv Berner and composer Brook McGarity. Admission is free and all are welcome.
The Songbirds Museum officially closed in 2020—although it’s reopening as a concert venue—but Mr. Beckett was able to get inside for “Songbirds: A Documentary” before the museum shut down. The film recently won an Emmy in the topical documentary category from the Nashville/Midsouth chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
The documentary also has been shown or won awards at film festivals in New York, Boston; Cannes, France; and Glasgow, Scotland.
Before it closed, the museum housed about 550 guitars, including some played or owned by such luminaries as Allman Brothers guitarist Duane Allman, bass player John Entwistle of the Who, blues guitarist B.B. King, the Beach Boys’ Carl Wilson and pioneering female guitarist Mary Kaye, a member of the Wrecking Crew—a famed set of studio musicians in Los Angeles.
“The guitars themselves are great, but I think the stories that come along with the guitars is what really is the value of the guitars,” Mr. Beckett said. “It makes you appreciate the guitars, the journey that those instruments have been on from the time that they were made.”