Philip Glass

Nonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Elektra Records. Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP. To achieve this he initially... licensed European recordings of classical music as it would be too expensive to record new material. Originally the label concentrated heavily on chamber and baroque music, often with unique repertory, and typically sold at less-than-premium prices. 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's Warner Music. In 2004, Warner Music Group became an independently owned, publicly traded company. Holzman's tastes led to several firsts for the label, including early electronic releases.
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Elektra Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group. In 2004, it was consolidated into WMG's Atlantic Records Group. After five years of dormancy, the label was revived by Atlantic in 2009. Elektra was formed in 1950 by Jac Holzman and Paul Rickolt in Holzman's St. John's... College dorm room. Each invested $300. The usual spelling of the Greek mythological Pleiad Electra was changed. Holzman famously explained, “I gave her the ‘K’ that I lacked”. He found the 'C' in the original name "too soft" but liked the "solid bite" of the letter 'K', citing its use in the Kodak name. The first Elektra LP, New Songs , was a collection of Lieder and similar 'art' songs which sold few copies. During the Fifties and early Sixties the label concentrated on folk music recordings, releasing a number of best-selling albums by Theodore Bikel, Ed McCurdy, Oscar Brand, Judy Collins and protest singers such as Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton. Holzman also recorded Josh White, who was without a record deal as a result of McCarthyite blacklisting. In 1964, Elektra launched Nonesuch Records.
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Sony Classical Records was started in 1927 as Columbia Masterworks Records, a subsidiary of the American Columbia Records. In 1948, it issued the first commercially successful long-playing 12" record. Over the next decades its artists included Isaac Stern, Pablo Casals, Vladimir Horowitz, Eugene... Ormandy, Vangelis, Elliot Goldenthal and Leonard Bernstein. Columbia Records used the Masterworks brand name not only for classical and Broadway records, but also for spoken-word albums such as Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly's successful I Can Hear It Now series. Parent CBS also featured the Masterworks name on its consumer electronics equipment. In 1980 the Columbia Masterworks label was renamed CBS Masterworks Records, but in 1990 after CBS Records was acquired by Sony it was finally renamed Sony Classical Records . During the 1990s the label attracted controversy under the leadership of Peter Gelb as it emphasized crossover music over mainstream classical releases, failing to make available much of its archive of great recordings.
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