Cedille Records
In my previous post,
Where to Record, I discussed the factors to be weighed in choosing a place to record. Today, I will introduce the members of the recording team.
The person who oversees the whole process of making the recording from beginning to end is the recording producer. This is usually the person (or people – you'll sometimes see two people credited as co-producers of a disc) who runs the recording sessions, although sometimes a separate "session director" may be employed for this purpose. For Cedille Records, I act as producer for the great majority of our recordings. Even for the discs where we use an outside producer – usually Grammy-winning producer Judith Sherman – I act as an uncredited "executive producer," attending the recording sessions when possible and personally weighing in during the various stages of the post-recording process to maintain the quality for which Cedille Records is known.
The other key person at a recording session is the recording engineer. Sometimes the producer and engineer are the same person (Judith Sherman usually engineers the recordings she produces, for example). The engineer is the person who achieves the sound at the sessions – including choosing and positioning the microphones (and often the players around the microphones) and balancing the levels to achieve the ultimate sound "mix." For almost all of Cedille's recordings, veteran engineer Bill Maylone performs this function.
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In my previous post, I raised this topic as a question - What do young artists and ensembles need to know about recording? - since I was scheduled to give a talk on that subject to a young chamber group. Having now given that talk, I return with some answers, which I will present over my next several posts.
One of the first decisions that must be made before recording can begin is where to record. There are many considerations that come into play when choosing a recording venue. These include:
Acoustics
Noise issues (both internal and external)
Availability
Degree of control
Available Equipment
Price
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Before I get to the topic of today's post, I want to congratulate our two Grammy winners (the awards were announced last night) eighth blackbird (Best Chamber Music Performance for their strange imaginary animals album) and Judith Sherman (Producer of the Year, Classical for albums including strange imaginary animals and violinist Rachel Barton Pine's American Virtuosa: Tribute to Maud Powell).
I was recently asked to give a symposium for the benefit of a young chamber ensemble on what they need to know about recording.
I thought I would use this opportunity to ask ChicagoClassicalMusic.org readers what YOU think musicians need to know. If you are a musician with questions about the recording process (or things you wish you had known earlier), please let me know what they are. Even if you are not, if you have ideas on what information would be helpful to an artist or group embarking on recording, please share those ideas.
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I attended Sunday afternoon's CSO "Beyond the Score" presentation on Tchaikovsky's Fourth. What is so great about these programs, which I highly recommend, is how they put masterpieces in perspective in terms of other art of the period - literary, visual, and musical. Right off the bat, three pieces were mentioned as influences on Tchaikovsky's 1878 symphony: Verdi's
La Forza del Destino, Bizet's
Carmen, and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
This got me to thinking about how some of the recordings in our catalog try to put great works into musical perspective. While Cedille Records' main mission is to present the work of Chicago's finest musicians and composers, we have a secondary mission of "increasing awareness and knowledge of neglected areas of the classical repertory" (from our Mission Statement). In addition to presenting unrecorded or relatively obscure works, this also means presenting programs that combine the familiar and the unfamiliar in ways that often shed new light on the more familiar work.
I should note that almost all our program ideas come from the Chicago musicians we record. The champion in finding ways to illuminate renowned works is violinist Rachel Barton Pine. Her 2003 recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Carlos Kalmar made quite an impression, not only for the great playing but because she coupled it with the great (but very rarely recorded) "Hungarian" Concerto by Joseph Joachim, which one critic called "the Holy Grail of Romantic violin concertos."
The reason this was such an illuminating choice was
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(Okay, so I'm a little late to the party.)
My personal discovery came as the result of a request from Steve Robinson, head honcho (officially Senior Vice President) of WFMT. Steve asked if we would be willing to offer a "fully-loaded" iPod containing every track from all 100+ CDs in the Cedille Records catalog as a premium for the station's November fund drive.
So I asked our engineer, Bill Maylone, to make a prototype I could listen to. Of course, this item has become my constant companion when I'm out of the house and a wonderful way for me to reacquaint myself with discs I produced years ago. Often, I'll have a sudden desire to hear a particular piece or performance and can call it up instantly. I remember especially the exhilaration of listening to the brisk scherzo and finale from Jan Vaclav Hugo Vorisek's Symphony in D Major (1821) while biking home through a violent thunderstorm this summer.
Equally fun is putting the iPod on "shuffle" and hearing the most eclectic mix of classical music imaginable.
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Cedille Records has just released its final recording for 2007, Snowcarols: Christmas Music of William Ferris, with the William Ferris Chorale, conducted by Paul French. The disc contains Ferris's big Christmas cantata, Snowcarols, along with shorter Christmas-themed choral works. As I like to do when we release a new project, I have asked someone intimately familiar with the project to guest blog the "backstory" of the recording -- in this case, Ferris Chorale Artistic Director John Vorrasi. Before I turn this over to him, I should note that the new disc and all full-price Cedille recordings are part of the Holiday Sale at our Newly Redesigned Web Site. I hope you will give it a look and let us know what you think of the new site. Thanks and Happy Thanksgiving, Jim. Now here's John's post:
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This month marks the release of Composers in the Loft, Cedille Records catalog number CDR 90000 100 – the one hundredth album in our main line of recordings featuring the work of musicians and composers in and from Chicago. (Cedille has also issued some lower-priced compilation discs and samplers, and one recording on its midprice Cedille FOUNDation imprint.)
It is particularly appropriate that this landmark recording was planned in collaboration with Chicago’s acclaimed Music in the Loft series of chamber music concerts, as a way to showcase the series, and in particular the work of its five composers in residence to date (prior to the current concert season).
Here is Music in the Loft Founder and Artistic Director Fredda Hyman’s description of how her composer in residence program has worked. The names of the composers and their pieces on the CD are highlighted:
In 2000, I decided to add another component to our Music in the Loft series. It would be to feature some of the works of a young composer as well as a specially commissioned piece to be played on our series. For our first composer, I chose Ricardo Lorenz, and his piano piece Bachangó was one of the works performed on our 2000/01 series. Carter Pann, the second composer I selected, had five of his chamber works performed, one of which was Differences for cello and piano. In 2003/04, Pierre Jalbert was the composer-in-residence and his Trio for violin, cello, and piano was performed as well as a commissioned piece written to a Billy Collins poem that will be included on a future “Billy Collins Suite” CD to be produced by Cedille Records. Our next composer-in-residence was Stacy Garrop; four of her chamber works were featured on our 2004/05 series, including the commissioned String Quartet No. 2, “Demons and Angels”. In 2005/06, Vivian Fung was our composer. Her first quartet was performed as well as a piano piece and Miniatures, a commissioned work for clarinet and string quartet.
No person should be the judge of their own case, but I am convinced that you will find as much pleasure in listening to the music of these gifted young composers as I found in bringing their work forward.
– Fredda Hyman
To celebrate this milestone release, we are offering Composers in the Loft on our web site at 25% off the regular price through the end of the month. Since this is the month of Halloween, we are also running a web-only, $10 special (through the end of October) on two particularly appropriate Cedille titles: violinist Rachel Barton Pine’s Instrument of the Devil album and Chicago Opera Theater’s chilling recording of Gian Carlo Menotti’s great ghost-story opera, The Medium.
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At the end of 2006, in a post titled Bringing Musicians Together, I explained how the Baroque ensemble, Trio Settecento, came into being as a result of a Cedille Records recording project ten years ago -- something about which I am particularly proud. In her personal note to the Trio's new recording, "An Italian Sojourn" (the official store release date is tomorrow), violinist Rachel Barton Pine tells (as Paul Harvey would say) the rest of the story.
As its title implies, the new album is of music by Italian composers (plus a sonata Handel wrote during his years in Italy). The Trio plans to continue recording with programs of German music, French music, and music from the British Isles to come in future years. I recently sent an email to Cedille Records customers allowing them to take a 25% discount on the new disc (through Sept. 15 only) by visiting our web site at this special page, a benefit I am glad to share with Chicagoclassicalmusic.org readers.
Now here's Rachel Barton Pine's personal note:
What a difference a decade makes! In 1996, John Mark Rozendaal, David Schrader, and I collaborated on a recording of Handel’s Violin Sonatas. We enjoyed working together so much that in 1997, we formed Trio Settecento. This album, An Italian Sojourn, represents the culmination of ten years’ growth for us as individuals and as an ensemble.
In 1996, I recorded Handel using a modernized 1617 Amati and a baroque bow. My interpretations on that album combined a historically-informed approach to phrasing and ornamentation with a contemporary application of vibrato. This continues to be my approach when performing a Baroque sonata alongside Romantic and 20th/21st Century works on my 1742 Guarneri del Gesu.
However, my exploration of the sound world of the 17th and 18th Centuries has evolved significantly. In 2002, I began performing this music on a 1770 Nicola Gagliano in original condition. This beautiful instrument has had a remarkable effect on my capability to be faithful to the early composers’ intents and to bring their music most fully to life.
I am so grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with John Mark and David. Their passion for music, boundless thirst for knowledge, and mastery of their instruments makes our time together an exciting musical adventure and increasingly rewarding. The longer we play together, the more we breathe as one, anticipate each others’ nuances, and discover increased freedom and spontaneity in our improvisations. And through all these years of intense rehearsing, we remain the best of friends!
Baroque music holds the power to delight and astonish. We chose the pieces on this album for their profound beauty and sometimes startling originality, even eccentricity. I hope that you are as excited to discover this music as we always are to play it.
--Rachel Barton Pine
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In my last post, I blogged about the evolution of a recording project. Today, I thought I'd report on how a current Cedille Records project came about.
The Chicago Classical Recording Foundation, which owns and operates Cedille as a not-for-profit recording label, sometimes helps facilitate commissions to the Chicago composers we promote. About four years ago, we helped a patron commission a Magnificat for a cappella choir from renowned Chicago composer Easley Blackwood. In return for this, Cedille Records gets the right/option to make the first recording of the work.
After he composed the Magnificat, Blackwood suggested making it part of a disc program of previously unrecorded American works for unaccompanied chorus. He sent one of his former students, who is also a choral conductor, to local music libraries to find the best examples. Blackwood vetted the scores and found absolute gems by Alan Hovhannes (Four Motets, Op. 268) and George Rochberg (Behold, My Servant). To this was added a recent Stabat Mater by another former Blackwood student, Egon Cohen.
When he came to me with these works as the basis for a possible recording, Blackwood did not have a choir in mind. Happily this occurred just as Cedille was beginning its relationship with the acclaimed William Ferris Chorale, which has made performing and recording overlooked American masterpieces its trademark. (Last fall, we released the Chorale's amazing live performances of Masses by Menotti and Vierne on a mid-price label, and this November we will release our own production of the Chorale performing Christmas Music by William Ferris, including his Pulitzer-nominated Snowcarols.)
In addition to being the perfect choir to sing the pieces selected so far, the Chorale added to the list a deeply moving new work by its conductor, Paul French ("Who Am I?" to a text by German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer) and, of course, a piece by William Ferris. So this past Spring, the Chorale performed in concert and then recorded the works by Hovhannes, French, and Blackwood. The rest of the program (Rochberg, Cohen, Ferris) will be performed and then recorded next Spring.
I believe this project shows the value of a local, community-based, not-for-profit recording label. It was Cedille Records' Foundation that commissioned the work from Easley Blackwood (acting as a conduit between the patron and the composer). Blackwood, being a veteran Cedille artist, knew exactly what kind of program would appeal to us by making the most significant contribution to the record catalog (our other mission in addition to promoting the work of Chicago musicians and composers) and set about designing such a program. And it was Cedille's relationship with Chicago's finest mid-sized choir that provided the performers for the project -- and completed the repertory. Without Cedille's connections to patrons, composers, and performers -- and ability to put them together -- it's hard to see how this project would ever have come about.
Instead, six previously unrecorded American masterpieces for a cappella choir by six different recent or contemporary composers will be preserved for posterity in performances of the highest caliber and be made available to music lovers around the world.
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Cedille Records has just released a new recording with pianist Jorge Federico Osorio. His previous Cedille recordings, Piano Espanol (of Spanish repertoire) and Mexican Piano Music by Manuel M. Ponce, touched on his Mexican heritage AND on his "considerable imagination for subtle timbres and vivid characterization" (The New York Times). It was this latter characteristic that made me welcome Osorio's desire to record Debussy's Preludes Books I & II, containing some of the most colorful piano writing of all time.
As I recounted in my second post on this site, however, I knew that no matter how good his interpretations were, it would be difficult to generate interest in yet another recording of the Debussy Preludes. So I suggested we should add repertory that reflected on the Debussy in a unique way and give people extra value by charging for the two-disc program at our regular, single-disc price.
Jorge originally suggested he would play impressionistic pieces by American composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes that were clearly influenced by Debussy's explorations in the Preludes -- and that's what I reported in my earlier post. After sitting with that music for a couple of months, however, Osorio discovered that it "just wasn't in his fingers." I believe an artist should never record music for which he or she does not have a strong personal feeling, so I readily agreed that he should look elsewhere.
If there is any one composer Osorio is known for playing, it would probably be Liszt. So instead of piano music influenced by Debussy, Jorge proposed adding music that influenced Debussy: Liszt's own explorations of pianistic tone painting from his "Annees de pelerinage" (Years of Pilgrimage). Furthermore, he proposed framing the individually-shorter Debussy preludes between the larger Liszt pieces for an ideal program arrangement.
So Disc 1 of Jorge Federico Osorio: Debussy & Liszt opens with Liszt's 3 Sonetti del Petrarca -- musical depictions of the emotions conjured by Petrarch's poems -- followed by Book I of Debussy's Preludes. Disc 2 opens with Debussy's Book II followed by two major Liszt compositions. First comes Les jeux d'eaux a la Villa d'Este, Liszt's amazing musical description of a magnificent fountain -- an obvious musical precedent to Ondine and The Engulfed Cathedral from Debussy's Preludes. The recording concludes with Liszt's heartbreaking Vallee d'Obermann, perhaps the ultimate pianistic exploration of human emotion.
I should note that not only is this 2-hour program being sold at a single disc price, but right now all full-price Cedille Recordings are on sale at 20% off their regular prices at the Cedille Records web site.
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