MusicMasters | |
---|---|
Parent company | Musical Heritage Society |
Founded | 1981 |
Founder | Albert Nissim Jeffrey Nissim Robert Nissim |
Distributor(s) | The Orchard |
Genre | Jazz Classical |
Country of origin | U.S. |
Location | Ocean, New Jersey |
Official website | www.themusicalheritagesociety.com |
MusicMasters was a record label based in Ocean, New Jersey.
MusicMasters was founded in the late 1970s by Albert Nissim and his sons Robert and Jeffrey, who owned the Musical Heritage Society, which had previously only licensed European recordings for sale via mail-order. [1]
MusicMasters produced recordings from 1981 until 1999, which were sold by mail-order and retail by the Music Heritage Society.[ citation needed ]
Initially, MusicMasters produced classical records, but began releasing jazz in 1985, when they obtained the rights to previously unreleased Yale University Library recordings by Benny Goodman. [2]
In 2008, arrangements were made to make MusicMasters recordings available via the Orchard, a global distributor of digital audio and video. [3]
John Browning won a Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Performance for a MusicMasters recording of Samuel Barber's solo piano music. Benny Carter won two individual Grammy Awards for MusicMasters recordings. [3]
This section contains a partial list of artists who have released recordings on the MusicMasters label. [4]
Benjamin David Goodman was an American clarinetist and bandleader known as the "King of Swing".
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and dominated jazz in the early 1940s when swing was most popular. The term "big band" is also used to describe a genre of music, although this was not the only style of music played by big bands.
Swing music is a style of jazz that developed in the United States during the late 1920s and early '30s. It became nationally popular from the mid-1930s. The name derived from its emphasis on the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat. Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, known as the swing era, when people were dancing the Lindy Hop. The verb "to swing" is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Musicians of the swing era include Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and Django Reinhardt.
Eugene Bertram Krupa, was an American jazz drummer, bandleader and composer. Krupa is widely regarded as one of the most influential drummers in the history of popular music. His drum solo on Benny Goodman's 1937 recording of "Sing, Sing, Sing" elevated the role of the drummer from an accompanist to an important solo voice in the band.
Bennett Lester Carter was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. With Johnny Hodges, he was a pioneer on the alto saxophone. From the beginning of his career in the 1920s, he worked as an arranger including written charts for Fletcher Henderson's big band that shaped the swing style. He had an unusually long career that lasted into the 1990s. During the 1980s and 1990s, he was nominated for eight Grammy Awards, which included receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award.
James Stanley Hall was an American jazz guitarist, composer and arranger.
Henry Jones Jr. was an American jazz pianist, bandleader, arranger, and composer. Critics and musicians described Jones as eloquent, lyrical, and impeccable. In 1989, The National Endowment for the Arts honored him with the NEA Jazz Masters Award. He was also honored in 2003 with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Jazz Living Legend Award. In 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. On April 13, 2009, the University of Hartford presented Jones with an honorary Doctorate of Music for his musical accomplishments.
Mark O'Connor is an American fiddle player and composer whose music combines bluegrass, country, jazz and classical. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he has won six Country Music Association Musician Of The Year awards and, was a member of three influential musical ensembles; the David Grisman Quintet, The Dregs, and Strength in Numbers.
Prelude, Fugue and Riffs is a "written-out" jazz-in-concert-hall composition composed by Leonard Bernstein for a jazz ensemble featuring solo clarinet.
Francisco de Jesús Rivera Figueras, known as Paquito D'Rivera, is a Cuban-American alto saxophonist, clarinetist and composer. He was a member of the Cuban songo band Irakere and, since the 1980s, he has established himself as a bandleader in the United States. His smooth saxophone tone and his frequent combination of Latin jazz and classical music have become his trademarks.
George Mesrop Avakian was an American record producer, artist manager, writer, educator and executive. Best known for his work from 1939 to the early 1960s at Decca Records, Columbia Records, World Pacific Records, Warner Bros. Records, and RCA Records, he was a major force in the expansion and development of the U.S. recording industry. Avakian functioned as an independent producer and manager from the 1960s to the early 2000s and worked with artists such as Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck, Eddie Condon, Keith Jarrett, Erroll Garner, Buck Clayton, Sonny Rollins, Paul Desmond, Edith Piaf, Bob Newhart, Johnny Mathis, John Cage, Alan Hovhaness, Ravi Shankar, and many other notable jazz musicians and composers.
William Edward Childs is an American composer, jazz pianist, arranger and conductor from Los Angeles, California, United States.
William Overton Smith was an American clarinetist and composer. He worked extensively in modern classical music, third stream and jazz, and was perhaps best known for having played with pianist Dave Brubeck intermittently from the 1940s to the early 2000s. Smith frequently recorded jazz under the name Bill Smith, but his classical compositions are credited under the name William O. Smith.
The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert by Benny Goodman, Columbia Records catalogue item SL-160, is a two-disc LP of swing and jazz music recorded at Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 16, 1938. First issued in 1950, the landmark recording captured the premiere performance given by a big band in the famed concert venue. The event has been described as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."
Fernando Otero is a Grammy-award-winning Argentine pianist, vocalist, and composer.
Miguel del Águila is an Uruguayan-born, American composer of contemporary classical music.
Colin David Currie is a multi award-winning Scottish virtuoso percussionist. He is the founder and leader of the Colin Currie Group, an ensemble specializing in performing and recording the music of Steve Reich.
David Finckel is an American cellist and influential figure in the classical music world. The cellist for the Emerson String Quartet from 1979 to 2013, Finckel is currently the co-artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, co-founder of the independent record label ArtistLed, co-artistic director and co-founder of Music@Menlo in Silicon Valley, producer of Cello Talks, professor of cello at the Juilliard School, and visiting professor of music at Stony Brook University.
David Chesky is an American pianist, composer, producer, arranger, and co-founder of the independent, audiophile label Chesky Records. He is also co-founder and CEO of HDtracks, an online music store that sells high-resolution digital music.
Harmonie Ensemble/New York is a musical organization based in New York City that performs and records an eclectic repertoire ranging from classical to jazz. Founded in 1979 by its conductor, Steven Richman, HE/NY has performed orchestra, chamber orchestra, symphonic jazz, big band, chamber, and wind ensemble works in virtually all of New York's concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Merkin Concert Hall, and St. Peter's, and throughout the United States under Columbia Artists Management. It also appears on radio and television. HE/NY has received numerous awards, including a GRAMMY Award nomination, the Classical Recording Foundation Award in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center Community Arts Project, and the WQXR Action for the Arts Award.