We also have Web-only interviews, demos of musical techniques, and some. It has also led the group to let us record them rehearsing and mixing a piece. David Bither at Nonesuch Records got a case of “demo-itis,” as they say, and he really fell in love with the versions I made that were really.
Label Code: LC 0286 / LC 00286
US record label identity subordinate to Nonesuch Records which is the trading name of Nonesuch Records Inc.. Releases credited to 'Nonesuch' without modifiers should use this label. If the label identity only uses other compound forms, use those identities, not this one. Releases as Nonesuch Records should be credited to that identity only when they are not credited to this one.
References to Nonesuch Records Inc. are the company identity and not the label. They may be included but every release must include the appropriate primary 'label' identity.
Elektra indicates that Elektra Records was founded in 1950 by Jac Holzman. Under his leadership Nonesuch was created in 1963 as a budget label for classical releases licensed from large classical record companies in Britain and France that did not have a cost-efficient means to distribute their releases directly in North America. Bill Harvey designed the packaging and releases were issued as 'Recordings at the Price of a Quality Paperback.' Nonesuch eventually hosted a large catalog of adventurous music from around the world and world-premiere recordings of contemporary composers of avant-garde, electronic and computer musics.
Warner Communications Inc. provides the most coherent summary of ownership and identity changes from 1969 onward. As a division of Elektra, Nonesuch was also acquired by Warner Communications [Kinney/WEA at the time] in 1970.
Releases from Elektra-based labels like Elektra, Nonesuch, and Asylum Records will usually state this affiliation as 'A Division Of Warner Communications Inc.'
Warner Communications
Elektra/Asylum Records states that the Elektra & Asylum Records labels were combined in August 1973 to form combined label identities Elektra/Asylum Records and Elektra/Asylum/Nonesuch Records.
The identity Elektra Nonesuch was used for 'some' releases from 1987 to 1995. Catalog entries for 'Nonesuch' or 'Nonesuch Records' continue through this period as well.
A further merger of the Elektra and Atlantic labels took place in 2004. Thereafter Nonesuch has been identified as a sub-label of [Warner Bros. Records within the Warner Music Group, continuing to use the established Elektra UPC prefix and numbering system.
US record label identity subordinate to Nonesuch Records which is the trading name of Nonesuch Records Inc.. Releases credited to 'Nonesuch' without modifiers should use this label. If the label identity only uses other compound forms, use those identities, not this one. Releases as Nonesuch Records should be credited to that identity only when they are not credited to this one.
References to Nonesuch Records Inc. are the company identity and not the label. They may be included but every release must include the appropriate primary 'label' identity.
Elektra indicates that Elektra Records was founded in 1950 by Jac Holzman. Under his leadership Nonesuch was created in 1963 as a budget label for classical releases licensed from large classical record companies in Britain and France that did not have a cost-efficient means to distribute their releases directly in North America. Bill Harvey designed the packaging and releases were issued as 'Recordings at the Price of a Quality Paperback.' Nonesuch eventually hosted a large catalog of adventurous music from around the world and world-premiere recordings of contemporary composers of avant-garde, electronic and computer musics.
Warner Communications Inc. provides the most coherent summary of ownership and identity changes from 1969 onward. As a division of Elektra, Nonesuch was also acquired by Warner Communications [Kinney/WEA at the time] in 1970.
Releases from Elektra-based labels like Elektra, Nonesuch, and Asylum Records will usually state this affiliation as 'A Division Of Warner Communications Inc.'
Warner Communications
Elektra/Asylum Records states that the Elektra & Asylum Records labels were combined in August 1973 to form combined label identities Elektra/Asylum Records and Elektra/Asylum/Nonesuch Records.
The identity Elektra Nonesuch was used for 'some' releases from 1987 to 1995. Catalog entries for 'Nonesuch' or 'Nonesuch Records' continue through this period as well.
A further merger of the Elektra and Atlantic labels took place in 2004. Thereafter Nonesuch has been identified as a sub-label of [Warner Bros. Records within the Warner Music Group, continuing to use the established Elektra UPC prefix and numbering system.
For the last six months, Robert Hurwitz has been going through the daily journals he kept during more than 30 years at the helm of Nonesuch Records. In thousands of pages, he documented working with the musicians who have made Nonesuch perhaps the most eclectic label in the business: the composers Steve Reich and John Adams, jazz auteurs like Brad Mehldau, the arena-filling rock duo the Black Keys, and esteemed songwriters like Randy Newman and Stephin Merritt.
Your average high-achieving record executive might use this opportunity for a tell-all book with himself at the center. But so far Mr. Hurwitz, who speaks with the quiet assurance of a college professor, has no interest in that.
“The journals themselves are more unique than any book that I could write,” he said. “I think what I have witnessed and what I have participated in is more interesting than my own story.”
![Nonesuch Records Demo Nonesuch Records Demo](http://www.nonesuch.com/sites/g/files/g2000005811/f/201904/nonesuch-2019-spring-vinyl-sampler-1200x628.jpg)
On Saturday, however, Mr. Hurwitz, 67, will be the center of attention for “A Nonesuch Celebration,” a concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music that will celebrate his career and legacy. Joseph V. Melillo, the academy’s executive producer — who has, by his count, put 36 Nonesuch artists onstage over the years — said it was the first time in his three decades there that an event honored a record executive.
“Bob is the epicenter of why Nonesuch and its artists have had a relationship with BAM,” Mr. Melillo said.
The concert will feature Nonesuch regulars like the Kronos Quartet, Natalie Merchant, Pat Metheny, Caetano Veloso, Chris Thile and Dawn Upshaw. And, in something of a musical gift, it will also include the premieres of 11 piano pieces written by Nonesuch composers for Mr. Hurwitz, himself a skilled amateur pianist. (During an interview at his office at Warner Music, the label’s parent company, a copy of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” lay open at his upright piano.)
Nonesuch was started in 1964 by Jac Holzman, the founder of Elektra Records, as a budget classical label. When Mr. Hurwitz took over in 1984, he was determined to remake Nonesuch as a home for maverick contemporary composers; in time, it also came to reflect his interests in world music, jazz and adult-leaning pop. Occasionally the label has scored out-of-the-blue hits, like “Buena Vista Social Club” and Henryk Gorecki’s somber Symphony No. 3, which sold more than a million copies. In 2014, BAM held a series of more than 20 concerts celebrating Nonesuch’s 50th anniversary.
In describing the label’s philosophy, Mr. Hurwitz contrasted it with “the other part of the record business,” meaning the pop world, where hits are bigger but the careers of artists — and, sometimes, label bosses — can be much shorter.
“We have always tried to simply do what we like,” Mr. Hurwitz said, “and hope that there’s enough people who will share the interests we have.”
Mr. Reich characterized that approach, and its departure from the usual ways of the music industry, as “a beacon of light in an otherwise dark situation.”
In 2015, Mr. Hurwitz announced that he would be stepping down as president, setting up another oddity in the record business: an orderly transition of executive power. Mr. Hurwitz became chairman emeritus this year, and the title of president went to David Bither, who started at Nonesuch 22 years ago and in recent years has been a driving force in bringing the label closer to the rock world. The indie-folk group Fleet Foxes, the label’s latest signing, will release its album “Crack-Up” in June.
Will Nonesuch abandon its classical roots? Not likely, and composers like Mr. Reich hold Mr. Bither in high regard. Yet when asked about his plans for the label, Mr. Bither’s answer was classic Nonesuch: “We’re going to go wherever our ears lead us.”
In the future, Mr. Hurwitz said he would work as an executive producer on Nonesuch albums — he has 12 or 13 in the works — and would continue to teach at the New School in New York and the University of California, Los Angeles. His goal as a teacher, he said, is to instill “high ideals about why records are still important.”
The piano pieces for Saturday were written by Laurie Anderson, Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass, Mr. Adams, Mr. Mehldau, Mr. Newman, Mr. Reich and four others. Mr. Adams — who, like Mr. Reich, has been signed to Nonesuch since 1984 — said the idea for the new pieces began when he overheard someone ask Mr. Hurwitz if he still plays the piano.
![Nonesuch Records Demo Nonesuch Records Demo](https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/5527c14fac1da5dab1ac9b55843f21a6/5DC89851/t51.2885-15/sh0.08/e35/s640x640/65048417_336344437290542_3260485371171554707_n.jpg?_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com)
“He said, ‘I still play,’ and somehow that just sparked something,” Mr. Adams said. “I thought, I have to write a piece for Bob that’s called ‘I Still Play,’ and that just expanded out to asking the other composers.”
Mr. Adams’s contribution, he said, has similarities to Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, one of Mr. Hurwitz’s favorite pieces, but he described its sound as “Satie meets Bill Evans.” It will be performed by Jeremy Denk, whose “Goldberg” traversal came out on Nonesuch in 2013. (Because of a schedule conflict, he will appear on video.) Others performing the pieces include Timo Andres, Thomas Bartlett and Mr. Mehldau.
Mr. Merritt, of the Magnetic Fields, signed to Nonesuch on 2002 and has released 10 albums on the label, under various names. The most recent sprang from what Mr. Hurwitz said was a 90-second pitch over lunch: a song for each year of Mr. Merritt’s life, as he was nearing 50. Mr. Merritt took to it, and after two years of work, the Magnetic Fields’ “50 Song Memoir” came out in March.
Mr. Merritt described a party at Mr. Hurwitz’s house last New Year’s Eve, where he said Mr. Hurwitz performed two Satie pieces for his guests — a kind of demonstration of what makes the label distinctive.
“At other record company parties, you’re expected to do cocaine with the Rolling Stones or something,” Mr. Merritt said. “At this company party, you listen to the record company president play Satie beautifully on his living room piano.”
On Saturday, Mr. Hurwitz will hear the new pieces for the first time from his seat at BAM.
“I am not going to play the pieces that night,” he said, “but I am going to try to learn every single one of them.”