Clifford Everett "Bud" Shank, Jr. was an American alto saxophonist and flautist. He rose to prominence in the early 1950s playing lead alto and flute in Stan Kenton's Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra and throughout the decade worked in various small jazz combos. He spent the 1960s as a first-call studio musician in Hollywood. In the 1970s and 1980s, he performed regularly with the L. A. Four. Shank ultimately abandoned the flute to focus exclusively on playing jazz on the alto saxophone. He also recorded on tenor and baritone sax. His most famous recording is probably the version of Harlem Nocturne used as the theme song in Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. He is also well known for the alto flute solo on the song "California Dreamin'" recorded by The Mamas & the Papas in 1965.
Michael Tilson Thomas is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is currently music director of the San Francisco Symphony and artistic director of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida.
Osmo Antero Vänskä is a Finnish conductor, clarinetist and composer.
Naxos Records is a record label specializing in classical music. Through a number of imprints, Naxos also releases Chinese music, jazz, world music, and early rock and roll. The company was founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, a German-born resident of Hong Kong. Since 2009 Naxos has distributed Blu-ray discs, streaming web radio, and podcasts. Naxos allows members of subscribing public libraries and music schools such as Hong Kong Public Libraries, Auckland Libraries, Wellington City Libraries, and Toronto Public Library free streaming of Naxos classical and jazz collections.
Rudolph Van Gelder was an American recording engineer who specialized in jazz. Over more than half a century, he recorded several thousand sessions, with musicians including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Horace Silver and Grant Green. He worked with many record companies but was most closely associated with Blue Note Records.
Steven Osborne is a Scottish pianist who has performed concertos and solo recitals worldwide.
William Steinberg was a German-American conductor.
Steven Epstein is an American record producer. He has won fifteen Grammy Awards, two Latin Grammys, and nominated 35 times. He has won Grammy Awards for Classical Producer of the Year seven times. While he is primarily known for his work in classical music, Epstein has Grammy nominations and wins for albums in musical theater, musical show, crossover, soundtrack, and spoken word for children.
Telarc International Corporation is an American audiophile independent record label founded in 1977 by two classically trained musicians and former teachers, Jack Renner and Robert Woods. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, the label has had a long association with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra, as well as with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Although it started as a classical music label, Telarc has released jazz, blues and country music recordings.
Steven Albini is an American musician, record producer, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman and Flour, and is a member of Shellac. He is the founder, owner and principal engineer of Electrical Audio, a recording studio complex in Chicago. In 2018, Albini estimated that he had worked on several thousand albums during his career.
Chesky Records is a record company and label founded in 1978 by brothers David and Norman Chesky. The company produces high-definition recordings of music in a variety of genres, including jazz, classical, pop, R&B, folk and world/ethnic. Chesky artists include McCoy Tyner, Herbie Mann, David Johansen and the Harry Smiths, Joe Henderson, Chuck Mangione, Paquito D'Rivera, Ron Carter, Larry Coryell, John Pizzarelli, Bucky Pizzarelli, Babatunde Olatunji, Ana Caram, and Rebecca Pidgeon.
Starkland is an independent record label based in Boulder, Colorado that specializes in alternative classical music. It was founded in 1991 by Thomas Steenland.
DMP Digital Music Products was one of the first digital recording labels, generally specializing in jazz artists. DMP was founded in 1983 by engineer Tom Jung after leaving Sound 80 recording studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Ida Levin was an American concert violinist. Levin taught at the Sander Vegh International Chamber Music Academy in Prague and was a former faculty member of Harvard University, the Colburn School and the European Mozart Academy.
A Meeting by the River is an album recorded by Ry Cooder and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt; it was recorded in September 1992 and released in April 1993 through the record label Water Lily Acoustics. This improvised, collaborative album features Cooder on slide guitar and Bhatt on the Mohan veena, a stringed instrument created by Bhatt. A Meeting by the River was produced by Kavichandran Alexander and Jayant Shah, engineered by Alexander, and mastered by Kevin Michael Gray and Paul Stubblebine. It peaked at number four on Billboard's Top World Music Albums chart, and earned Cooder and Bhatt Grammy Awards for Best World Music Album at the 36th Grammy Awards (1994). The album is included in Tom Moon's 2008 book 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die.
Channel Classics Records is a record label from the Netherlands, specializing in classical music. The managing director and producer is C. Jared Sacks, who grew up in Boston. Sacks was schooled as a professional horn player at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. With fifteen years of experience in making music, Sacks decided to turn his hobby of making musical recordings into his work in 1987. The record label started in 1990 and was called after the street where he lived at the time, the Kanaalstraat in Amsterdam.
Klaus Heymann is a German entrepreneur and the founder and head of the Naxos record label.
Kavichandran Alexander is an audio engineer and record producer. He is a Sri Lankan Tamil.
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.
Music for the Motherless Child is a collaboration album between English folk guitarist Martin Simpson and Chinese pipa player Wu Man, released by Water Lily Records in 1996. As with the other album's released on the label, it was recorded at Christ the King Chapel, St. Anthony Seminary, Santa Barbara, by Tamil producer and label owner Kavichandran Alexander, who, also similarly to the label's other releases, curated and oversaw the project as a fusion between the music of two disparate cultures. Neither Simpson or Man had met before the recording of the album, which was done in only a single session that lasted seven hours. Alexander employed vacuum tube recording and took advantage of the church's natural acoustics.
