Dust-to-Digital live: keynote Q&A and listening session

Lance Ledbetter of Dust-to-Digital will deliver a keynote presentation at this year’s Haarlem Vinyl Festival, joined by April Ledbetter for a Q&A following his talk.

For over two decades, Dust-to-Digital has been at the forefront of music preservation and storytelling. Founded in Atlanta in 1999 by Lance Ledbetter, and now co-directed with his wife April, the label has built an extraordinary reputation for curating, restoring, and presenting music that might otherwise have been lost to time.

What began with beautifully crafted box sets, CDs, DVDs, and vinyl releases has since expanded into the digital realm, bringing forgotten sounds to new audiences through books, streaming formats, and multimedia experiences. Their work has been recognized with Grammy Awards, including for *Art of Field Recording Volume 1* (2007) and *Voices of Mississippi* (2019).

To date, Dust-to-Digital has digitized more than 50,000 rare and historic audio recordings, safeguarding the legacies of musicians from around the globe. These are not just recordings of songs, they are cultural documents that reveal the roots of the music we know today.
And if you’ve ever stumbled upon their influential Instagram account, you already know the magic they create online.

Since 2017, Dust-to-Digital has built a community of over a million followers (including countless artists) with rare performance clips: field recordings, archival broadcasts, and musical moments that feel like time travel in your feed.

At Haarlem Vinyl Festival, part of the keynote will feel like a live version of that Instagram experience—a chance to see, hear, and feel the stories behind their most remarkable finds, woven together with insights from the people who made it all happen.

Looking ahead, Dust-to-Digital is also partnering with a prestigious university (to be announced soon) to launch a major new initiative: making their vast archive accessible online for scholars, music enthusiasts, and the general public. This bold step ensures that these vital cultural treasures won’t just be preserved, but actively shared with generations to come.

This keynote and Q&A offer a rare opportunity to experience the work of Dust-to-Digital in person, and to discover why their mission of preserving the past is so crucial for the future of music.

Dust-to-Digital
Saturday September 27th
Time: 15:00 - 16:00
Location: PHIL (Kleine Zaal)
Tickets: this session is accessible for Saturday and weekendticketholders, available here.

This listening session is supported by Podiumkunst.net