Robert Hurwitz | |
---|---|
President of Nonesuch Records | |
In office 1984–2017 | |
Personal details | |
Education | University of California, Berkeley |
Occupation | Music Executive |
Robert Hurwitz (born in 1949) was president of Nonesuch Records from 1984 to 2017. [1] [2] [3] He was named Chairman Emeritus of Nonesuch Records in January 2017. [4] He previously ran the American operations of ECM Records, [5] [6] after beginning his career at Columbia Records. [2] Hurwitz grew up in Los Angeles, where he was trained as a pianist and graduated from Alexander Hamilton High School in 1967, then went on to study at the University of California, Berkeley. [7] [8]
Founded as a classical label in 1964, [9] Nonesuch expanded into the world music field in 1967 with its Explorer series. [10] Since Hurwitz became head of the company, it has further expanded its mission to include artists from a wide range of musical genres, including jazz, musical theater, folk, bluegrass, and rock. [11] [12]
Among the artists he has signed or worked with are composers including John Adams, Timo Andres, Louis Andriessen, Henryk Górecki, Philip Glass, Ástor Piazzolla, Steve Reich, Stephen Sondheim, and John Zorn as well as performers and songwriters including Björk, Jeremy Denk, Bill Frisell, Richard Goode, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Kronos Quartet, Gidon Kremer, k.d. lang, Audra McDonald, Fred Hersch, [13] Brad Mehldau, Pat Metheny, Punch Brothers, Randy Newman, Joshua Redman, Fernando Otero, [14] Chris Thile, Dawn Upshaw, and Caetano Veloso. During this time, the label’s artist roster has grown to also include Laurie Anderson, The Black Keys, Buena Vista Social Club, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Ry Cooder, Emmylou Harris, and Wilco, among many others. [3] [11] [12]
Hurwitz has produced recordings by Caetano Veloso, [5] [15] Stephen Sondheim, [16] Astor Piazzolla, [17] and Teresa Stratas, [18] and was the producer of the 1993 film George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker. [19] Nonesuch releases have won 42 Grammy Awards during his tenure. [20]
Robert Hurwitz has taught a course at The New School in New York City since 2006. [21]
In a July 1998 article on Hurwitz and Nonesuch Records, the Boston Globe’s Ed Siegel wrote: “Under Robert Hurwitz, Nonesuch Records has been an oasis of artistic excitement. When one picks up a Nonesuch CD, there is a sense of occasion, the feeling that the artists in question have been assembled not as an exercise in star power, but as an exercise in artistic exploration.” [22]
An October 2004 New York Times Magazine profile written by Russell Shorto states: “In a business now largely run by accountants and M.B.A.’s, Hurwitz is, in the words of Stephen Sondheim, ‘one of the few left who practice the making of records as a craft.’” [7]
Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla was an Argentine tango composer, bandoneon player, and arranger. His works revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music. A virtuoso bandoneonist, he regularly performed his own compositions with a variety of ensembles. In 1992, American music critic Stephen Holden described Piazzolla as "the world's foremost composer of Tango music".
Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo, which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s, at the beginning of the Brazilian military dictatorship that took power in 1964. He has remained a constant creative influence and best-selling performing artist and composer ever since. Veloso has won nine Latin Grammy Awards and two Grammy Awards. On November 14, 2012, Veloso was honored as the Latin Recording Academy Person of the Year.
Milonga is a musical genre that originated in the Río de la Plata areas of Argentina, Uruguay and the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.
Kremerata Baltica is a chamber orchestra consisting of musicians from Baltic countries. It was founded by Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer in 1997. Gidon Kremer is an artistic director of Kremerata Baltica.
Nonesuch Records is an American record company and label owned by Warner Music Group, distributed by Warner Records, and based in New York City. Founded by Jac Holzman in 1964 as a budget classical label, Nonesuch has developed into a label that records critically acclaimed music from a wide range of genres. Robert Hurwitz was president of the company from 1984 to 2017.
Fred Hersch is an American jazz pianist, educator and HIV/AIDS activist. He was the first person to play weeklong engagements as a solo pianist at the Village Vanguard in New York City. He has recorded more than 70 of his jazz compositions. Hersch has been nominated for several Grammy Awards, and, as of December 2014, had been on the Jazz Studies faculty of the New England Conservatory since 1980.
Sérgio Assad is a Brazilian guitarist, composer, and arranger who often performs with his brother, Odair in the guitar duo Sérgio and Odair Assad, commonly referred to as the Assad Brothers or Duo Assad. Their younger sister Badi is also a guitarist. Assad is the father of composer/singer/pianist Clarice Assad. He is married to Angela Olinto.
"Wave" is a bossa nova and jazz standard song written by Antônio Carlos Jobim. Recorded as an instrumental on his 1967 album of the same name, its English lyrics were written by Jobim himself later that year.
cê is an album by Brazilian singer, songwriter, and guitarist Caetano Veloso. Released on 1 September 2006 on Mercury Records, the album took its title from the colloquial Portuguese word meaning you. It was written with Veloso's band in mind, which was chosen in part by guitarist Pedro Sá. cê received positive critical commentary; several critics specifically noted the album's lyrical focus on human sexuality.
Jaques Morelenbaum is a Brazilian instrumentalist, arranger, conductor, composer and music producer.
The discography of the Kronos Quartet includes 43 studio albums, two compilations, five soundtracks, and 29 contributions to other artists' records. The Kronos Quartet plays classical, pop, rock, jazz, folk, world and contemporary classical music and was founded in 1973 by violinist David Harrington. Since 1978, they are based in San Francisco, California. Since 1985, the quartet's music has been released on Nonesuch Records.
Five Tango Sensations is a suite of works (Asleep—Loving—Anxiety—Despertar—Fear) for bandoneón and string quartet written in 1989 by Argentine composer Ástor Piazzolla. It was premiered in New York that year and recorded immediately afterwards by the Kronos Quartet and the composer, who played the bandoneón. The record was one of a set of three internationally tinged albums released simultaneously, the Argentine music of this album being accompanied by the music of South-African composer Kevin Volans on Kevin Volans: Hunting:Gathering and the music of Polish composer Witold Lutosławski on Witold Lutosławski: String Quartet.
Tango: Zero Hour is an album by Ástor Piazzolla and his Quinteto Nuevo Tango. It was released in September 1986 on American Clavé, and re-released on Pangaea Records in 1988.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: The Motion Picture Soundtrack is a soundtrack to the film of the same name, released on December 18, 2007.
This is a Nonesuch Records discography, organized by catalog number.
Live at Carnegie Hall is a 2012 collaborative album recorded by Brazilian artist Caetano Veloso and Scottish-American alternative rock musician David Byrne at New York City's Carnegie Hall as a part of their 2004 Perspectives series. Veloso was invited to curate a performance and he invited Byrne, who in turn performed a solo set of his own as well as collaborative work between them. The album was released on Nonesuch Records on March 12, 2012.
Pagina de Buenos Aires is a piece by Argentine composer, pianist, and vocalist Fernando Otero, recorded in 2007 and released on his studio album Pagina de Buenos Aires on the Nonesuch label in 2008. The piece starts in the key of A minor and modulates twice, moving towards C minor and later to G minor. The version included in the album is shorter in comparison to live performances, with a duration of 4:07 minutes. The title of the piece "Pagina de Buenos Aires" means "Buenos Aires' story". It was based on Otero’s earlier composition "No Pudo Ser", written in Buenos Aires in 1993, of which he kept the melodic part and re-arranged the rest with some additions. It would prove to be one of Otero's most well-known and popular compositions, and it has been recorded by many artists using different arrangements and orchestrations.
Pagina de Buenos Aires is an album by Argentine composer, pianist and vocalist Fernando Otero recorded in 2007 and released in 2008 on the Nonesuch label.
Good Day! is an American morning television program which aired from September 24, 1973 until October 11, 1991. Produced by WCVB-TV in Boston, Good Day! aired on that local ABC affiliate for its entire 18 years of production, airing in various timeslots between 9 and 11 a.m. on WCVB's morning schedule. The program was later syndicated to seventy-one American television markets, expanding its viewership beyond its primary New England viewer base.