Playing the Changes, a traveling exhibition

was developed in 2016 by Jeremy Smith, former Oberlin Special Collections Librarian and Curator of the James and Susan Neumann Jazz Collection, David G. Berger and Holly Maxon, executors of the Milton J. Hinton Photographic Collection, and Peter Dominguez, Oberlin Professor of Jazz Studies and Double Bass.

The exhibit combines up to 50 of Hinton’s most acclaimed original photographs taken between the 1930s and 1990s with insightful biographical material drawn from the Milton J. and Mona C. Hinton Collection in the Oberlin Conservatory Library’s special collections.

The Milt Hinton Institute for Studio Bass 

is a week-long program of technique classes, workshops, master classes, recitals, recording sessions, and bass sessions designed for college and pre-college bass students (ages 13 and up). This biennial summer program, inaugurated in 2014, is directed by Oberlin Professor of Jazz Studies and Double Bass Peter Dominguez. The Institute is funded by Oberlin and an endowment (formerly the Milton J. Hinton Scholarship Fund) from the Hinton estates.

Raw video footage of the 2018 Institute is housed in the Conservatory special collections, and is available for approved on-site viewing. Footage depicts classes, workshops, lectures, performances, recording sessions, and interviews. For more information please contact Conservatory Library special collections staff.

The Oberlin Conservatory acquired four of Milt Hinton’s basses that are regularly played by Oberlin Professor of Jazz Studies and Double Bass Peter Dominguez and his bass students. This includes the Italian bass (ca. 1790) that Milt performed on for most of his career, and that was fully restored by luthier Bruno Destrez in 2018, a King bass featured in Milt’s “Slap Bass” videos, a blonde Kay bass Milt played in the 1957 television program “The Sound of Jazz,” and an Ampeg baby bass played by Milt on the Dick Cavett Show.

Photographs taken by Milt Hinton 

are in the collection at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. A list of the thirty-four photographs is available in the Museum’s catalog.

The Milton J. Hinton Photographic Collection

The black-and-white photographs taken by Milt Hinton between 1935 and 1999 comprise the major part of the Milton J. Hinton Photographic Collection (MJHPC). The MJHPC is directed, curated, and owned by David G. Berger and Holly Maxson, and contains approximately 60,000 35mm black-and-white negatives, thousands of reference and exhibition-quality prints, approximately 4,000 color slides, and photographs given to and collected by Milt and Mona Hinton. The MJHPC holds copyright to all of these materials.