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Nonesuch Records

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Nonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed through Warner Bros. Records

Company history

Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to license European recordings of classical music. Upon its formation, Nonesuch operated as a subsidiary label of Elektra Records—which Holzman launched in 1950. In 1970, Holzman sold Elektra and Nonesuch to Kinney National Company, which later became Warner Communications and later part of Time Warner).

Teresa Sterne was the coordinator of the company from its inception until 1979; she was responsible not only for all of the artists & repertory decisions but also for overseeing the increasingly distinctive look of the record jackets. Her abrupt termination in 1979 ushered in a period of uncertainty and decline (she was replaced by the founder's younger brother , Keith Holzman, who had been the production chief and who had no musical background. He moved its base and focus on West Coast music and artists . With the hiring of Robert Hurwitz as coordinator in 1984 the company's fortunes began to stabilize. The label was known as Elektra Nonesuch from 1987 to 1995.

In the late 1990s, as Elektra began to falter, many of Nonesuch's releases were distributed outside of the Elektra umbrella—through other Warner Music Group labels. In the early 2000s, Nonesuch briefly operated under Atlantic Records, before moving to Warner Bros. Records in 2004, although it is technically still part of Elektra because of its UPC prefix.

Nonesuch Explorer Series

In the late 1960s, the Nonesuch Explorer Series made Nonesuch a pioneer in the field of world music, before the term had even been coined. The series, which Nonesuch released from 1967 to 1984, consisted of field recordings made primarily in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe.

For non-travelers, it was the first exposure to musical idioms such as music produced by a gamelan. In 1977, a few of the recordings were chosen for the Voyager Golden Record, and sent into outer space aboard the Voyager spacecraft. The analogue original recordings have been digitized, and the series, remastered and with new packaging, is currently being re-released in CD format.

See also

External links



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