A record label usually dictates a lot of an album's culture and aesthetics yet is usually not in the spotlight. By the Label is a biweekly column that features different labels and the stories behind them.
With thousands of releases under its belt, it's no surprise that buried somewhere in that melting pot of Nonesuch Records' discography is a Pergolesi opera buffa, exorcism music from Tibetan Buddhism and, oh yeah, some cuts from The Black Keys.
Founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman, who founded the more folk- and rock-oriented Elektra Records in 1950 in his dorm room, Nonesuch Records originally focused primarily on classical music. The label's goal was to create classical records at cheap prices. Holzman licensed European recordings of chamber and baroque orchestrations. Early Nonesuch releases include Haydn symphonies, Vivaldi string concertos and Bach sonatas.
In the later part of the 1960s, Holzman launched the Explorer Series, which put out an array of world music in an otherwise fairly homogenous music scene. From 1967 to 1984, the Explorer Series introduced world music to an audience who was, for the most part, unfamiliar with the genre (the term had been coined at around the same time in the '60s). Field recordings from all over the globe, from Asia and Africa to Eastern Europe and the Caribbean, broke Nonesuch's boundaries, which had previously enclosed it to strictly Western European classical music.
In 1970, Holzman sold both Elektra and Nonesuch to Kinney National Company, which, after some transitions, became Warner Music Group in 2004. Along with the Explorer series, Nonesuch, still following in Holzman's tastes, released many pioneer releases of early electronic music in the late 1960s. One of these was the wildly popular Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music, a double LP set on Moog sounds with an accompanying 16-page guide. The release was on the Billboard Top 100 chart for 26 weeks.
In more recent decades, Nonesuch has featured more contemporary works and artists, including the "new music" genre. Innovative composers such as minimalists Steve Reich and Philip Glass and avant-garde experimentalists such as John Cage and, later, Brian Eno gained their deserved spotlight. Still staying in tune with Nonesuch's original mission statement to bring a unique repertoire to their eager listeners, these "new music" composers broke boundaries and set the tone for the experimental era of the 20th century classical music scene.
Finally, under its Warner Music Group umbrella, Nonesuch later also added modern rock and pop artists, including The Black Keys, Jeff Tweedy, Joni Mitchell and Björk, and musical theater soundtracks, including works by Stephin Merritt and George Gershwin, as well as a vast selection of jazz musicians, thus rounding the circumference of a truly diverse spread of genres.
Notable Releases
Debussy - Ibéria (Images pour orchestre) / Albéniz - Suite from Iberia (Arbos orchestration)
French composer Debussy and Spanish composer Albéniz both take on Iberia. Debussy's Ibéria is part of a three-part orchestral composition written in the early 20th century. Albéniz's Iberia is a suite for piano written also in the same time period, and can be categorized under impressionist classical music, which Debussy, much to his own chagrin, is also identified with by contemporaries.
The Real Bahamas: In Music and Song (1966)
Part of the Nonesuch Explorer Series, this compilation is recorded on location in the Bahamas by producer and engineer Peter K. Siegel and American bluegrass musician Jody Stecher in June of 1965. The original "We Will Understand It Better By and By" on the album is by Edith, Geneva and Raymond Pinder and Joseph Spence, and, like the rest of the album, carries religious sentiment, sung in gatherings.
The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music (1968)
One of the cornerstones of early electronic music, this release, performed by jazz musician Paul Beaver and soundscape recordist Bernard L. Krause, is more of a demonstration than it is a conceptual album. Beaver and Krause, both pioneers in the then new field of electronic music, met while playing Moog synthesizer on the Monkees' "Star Collector," one of the first pop songs to feature this fairly new instrument. The Nonesuch Guide serves as an introduction to the Moog with sounds realized on the Moog Series III Synthesizer.
Schoenberg - Piano Music (1975)
Pianist Paul Jacobs performs all of Schoenberg's piano pieces, including Six Little Piano Pieces, which includes Schoenberg's famed twelve-tone technique, in which all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded exactly once before they can be repeated. Because Schoenberg used the piano to experiment his theories of atonalism and serialism, this album contains many seminal pieces that showcase Schoenberg's ideas of dissonance and avant-garde theories.
Steve Reich - Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint (1989)
Back when the Grammy's weren't dumb yet, minimalist pioneer Steve Reich, who turned 75 last year, won Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 1990 for Different Trains. The three-movement piece, performed by the notable Kronos Quartet, contains recordings of interviews Reich conducted of people involved during World War II, using speech as a source for melodies. Like his other recordings, Reich edited the composition using tape. This album also contains Electric Counterpoint, performed by guitarist Pat Metheny, which uses tape looping and sampling for a layered, overdubbed effect.
George Gershwin - Gershwin Plays Gershwin: The Piano Rolls (1993)
This masterpiece of the early 20th century is such a charm to hear with the personal styles and frills of the legendary composer himself. Using piano rolls that George Gershwin arranged himself between 1916 and 1933, the album contains, along with the landmark "Rhapsody in Blue," rare never-before-recorded tunes.
Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi (Soundtrack) (1998)
Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, released in 1982, is the first in a trilogy of art films by director Godfrey Reggio. Without plot, characters or narration, the film features moving images of landscapes and cities set to the Glass' hypnotic, minimalist compositions. (Glass joins Reich as two of the seminal foundation-makers of the minimalist music movement.) This is a great introduction to the mesmerizing repertoire of Glass, who recently celebrated his 75th birthday, as they're set to subliminal images, in a sort of creepier Clockwork Orange-esque manner.