It’s no secret that the classical recording industry is in a commercial tailspin. The major companies–Universal Classics (which owns the DG, Decca and Philips labels), Sony Classical, BMG and Atlantic Classics–are making fewer discs with major orchestras and artists, cutting back on operas and other expensive projects and shifting their attention to mass-market items like crossover discs and soundtracks.
Flat retail sales invariably are blamed for the retrenchment. But, given the glut of performances of standard repertory bloating the CD catalog–including 22 complete sets of the Beethoven symphonies–it must be said that the big companies have brought on much of the problem themselves.
With so many recording Goliaths struggling just to stay alive, such Davids as Chicago’s Cedille Records are enjoying a hale-and-hearty last laugh.
Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, Cedille (pronounced “say-dee”) owes its viability to the business and artistic acumen of James Ginsburg, its founder, manager and producer. He is among the last independent entrepreneurs in classical recording, one of the few who have kept to their artistic vision and made a success of it in a dicey marketplace.
A former University of Chicago law school student who happens to be the son of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he has run Cedille as a non-profit organization with a specialized cultural mission since 1994. Not only does Cedille undertake worthwhile projects the big boys wouldn’t touch–projects that fill useful niches in the catalog–but it also provides valuable exposure for deserving Chicago musicians.
“Our mission has not changed–it has just been codified now that we are a not-for-profit organization,” the 34-year-old Ginsburg said recently in the classical department of Tower Records’ Clark Street store, where he was delivering a batch of new Cedille releases.
The Chicago connection is key, he explains. “Our charter is based on the Chicago performers and composers we record. Occasionally musicians outside the city will pitch a recording idea to us. We have to explain to them that if their project doesn’t have a Chicago basis, unfortunately we can’t consider it.”
Although he employs a staff of three (including a full-time recording engineer), and contracts with an outside marketing person, Ginsburg still subscribes to the personal approach when doing business with major record outlets in greater Chicago. He runs Cedille out of the basement of the two-story house in Uptown he shares with his wife and two young children. In the shrinking world of independent classical labels, he is like the proprietor of one of the last remaining neighborhood soda fountains.
Cedille began life in November 1989 as the recording home for Chicago pianists Easley Blackwood, Dmitry Paperno and David Schrader, who still make discs for the label. Gradually Ginsburg cast his net wider to include such local ensembles as the Chicago Baroque Ensemble, Chicago Chamber Musicians, the Vermeer Quartet and the Chicago Sinfonietta, as well as violinist Rachel Barton, soprano Patrice Michaels Bedi and duo-pianists Georgia and Louise Mangos. He helped form the Chicago Classical Recording Foundation in 1993 to assume responsibility for the label’s operations.
Ginsburg purposely limits Cedille’s releases to seven titles a year. “I have to make sure I can give them the kind of marketing attention but, more importantly, time it takes to produce the best quality product,” he explains. When Cedille was in its infancy, Ginsburg went to local artists with project ideas. These days, he says, most come to him. Two recent examples of recordings that originated with the performers themselves are Barton’s recital of infernal violin works, “Instrument of the Devil,” and Mary Stolper’s disc of American flute concertos by Lita Grier, Virgil Thomson and Elie Siegmeister.
This month Cedille is releasing a Pacifica Quartet disc that holds Blackwood’s three string quartets (1957, 1959 and 1998) and a CD devoted to Chicago composer Frank Ferko’s Stabat Mater, which His Majestie’s Clerkes recorded in August soon after giving the world premiere here. May will bring the final installment of the Mangos sisters’ survey of Liszt’s works for two pianos and piano four hands, containing six Hungarian Rhapsodies and the “Mephisto Waltz.”
The 51 titles in the Cedille catalog reflect not only Ginsburg’s personal taste but also his predilections in repertory. Music of the 20th Century is well represented, although he admits he is a conservative when it comes to modern music. “I want stuff that can appeal to a broad community” of listeners, he says.
Mainstream classical pieces he records hardly at all, and then only in the context of innovative programs by artists he believes have something distinctive to bring to them. “There was one local artist who came to me recently and suggested we record his Bach Goldberg Variations.” Ginsburg, citing the dozens of available recordings of the work, took a pass. “It’s hard to pull a Glenn Gould these days,” he says.
Although Cedille does not advertise itself as an audiophile label per se, Ginsburg clearly takes sonic considerations as seriously as artistic values. All of the label’s releases for 2000 are in state-of-the-art, 24-bit digital sound. Ginsburg and Bill Maylone, his engineer since the label’s inception, give painstaking attention to microphone selection and placement. They carefully match the music to the recording hall. Most of Cedille’s instrumental discs are recorded in the WFMT performance studio, but for larger works requiring a more reverberant space, Ginsburg will truck his equipment to such sonically superior venues as Bennett-Gordon Hall at Ravinia or Mallinckrodt Chapel in Wilmette, where the Ferko Stabat Mater was recorded.
“I don’t have one approach to sound. Rather, I vary from project to project, depending on the space in which we are recording,” Ginsburg says.
Once he and Maylone agree on a rough cut, Ginsburg will send it to the performers for comment. Last year, while listening to a preliminary edit of one of the works on her American flute concertos disc, Stolper noticed she took three breaths in the same bar of music. “I knew that was something flute players would spot right away,” says Ginsburg, “so I substituted another take in the version we finally released.”
In the old days of Cedille, Ginsburg would edit the master tapes himself, switching between digital audio tape systems. To minimize expensive studio editing time, he would sneak into a radio station at night and use their equipment to splice together a master before taking it into the studio for the final edit. Now he and Maylone do the work in their homes, on their own digital editing systems, communicating mainly by e-mail. “These days we are able to do a more refined, much more efficient job,” Ginsburg says.
Recording costs vary, according to the size of the project and the number of musicians involved. For Cedille’s 1995 disc of David Diamond chamber works by the Chicago Chamber Musicians, the budget amounted to just over $22,000–including artists’ fees, manufacturing, engineering, printing, publicity, advertising, hall rental and stagehand fees. A Vivaldi recording by the Chicago Baroque Ensemble ran a little over $16,000.
With only about 20 percent of costs covered by actual record sales, Cedille uses its not-profit foundation status to solicit funds from foundation, corporate, private and arts-council sources to make up the difference, Ginsburg says.Selected titles have sold a respectable 3,000 or more copies–Barton’s 1997 CD of the Handel violin sonatas remains, at nearly 6,000 copies sold, Cedille’s top-selling release to date–but the label chief does not expect to break even on most of the discs he produces. “Our sales revenues have gone up, but at the moment our costs have probably risen faster,” Ginsburg says.
Undaunted, he is busy mapping out recording projects for well into 2002. He is especially excited about a planned three-disc African Heritage Symphonic Series he is doing with conductor Paul Freeman and the Chicago Sinfonietta; the first volume of that series is due for taping here in May and should be in the shops in November. Ginsburg also plans to make the first complete recording of Robert Kurka’s “The Good Soldier Schweik,” following the Chicago Opera Theater’s performances of the work next spring. Other Cedille projects involving Bedi, Schrader and the Chicago Baroque Ensemble are in the works.
Classical record buyers tend to be a highly opinionated lot, but thus far Ginsburg says that very few have complained about anything they have heard on the Cedille label. “I have a couple of regular correspondents. One guy in Texas sends me nine-page handwritten letters in which he says we are rapidly approaching Joe DiMaggio’s record of consecutive hits. He seems quite happy with what we are doing.”
So what does Ginsburg’s famous mother think of the success of his label? “When I began Cedille, she was kind of dubious,” he admits. “Not that every disc we put out is to my mom’s taste.” He grins broadly. “But now my parents are my biggest supporters.”
SOME NOTEWORTHY RELEASES
Chicago musicians are well represented on Cedille Records releases. Here are some of the more noteworthy recent CD issues:
Frank Ferko: Stabat Mater (world premiere recording). His Majestie’s Clerkes, Anne Heider, director; Nancy Gustafson, soprano. 90000 051.
String Quartets Nos. 1-3 by Easley Blackwood. Pacifica Quartet. 90000 050.
Songs of the Classical Age (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Righini and others). Patrice Michaels Bedi, soprano; David Schrader, fortepiano. 90000 049.
Early Chamber Music of Elliott Carter (Pastoral, Woodwind Quintet, Cello Sonata, Eight Etudes and a Fantasy). Chicago Pro Musica. 90000 048.
Double Play (duos by Ravel, Kodaly, Schulhoff and Martinu). Rachel Barton, violin; Wendy Warner, cello. 90000 047.
