Here are some excerpts from the April 13th article in the New York Times
"CRI IS DEAD. LONG LIVE CRI!"
Fortunately, the CRI master tapes were carefully preserved. They
now pass to New World, which was founded in 1975 with support
from the Rockefeller Foundation. Its initial mandate was to
produce a 100-disc anthology of American music from William
Billings to William Bolcom. Some 7,000 copies of the anthology
were provided free to American schools and libraries. But after
the project was completed, New World stayed in the nonprofit
recording business. It continued raising funds for projects
that would most likely have been ignored by for-profit labels,
recordings ranging from Lou Harrison's Piano Concerto to a concert
by the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble.
Like CRI, New World, with its annual budget of $1.2 million, has
a policy of keeping every album available. Producing custom-made
cd's should help it meet that pledge.
The new technologies are already compelling consumers to rethink
what it means to collect recordings. A cd is essentially a
floppy disc coated in plastic. The information on the disc is
what matters, and there are ways to transmit it that do not
involve shipping boxes of cd's to retail stores. Mr. Schultz,
who last year left CRI to become the executive director of Eliza
Monte Dance in New York, pointed out that most composers today
can digitally edit recordings of performances of their works,
burn individual copies and distribute them on their own web
sites.
"CRI is less paramount than it used to be," he said. "Its become
a sort of dinosaur." Maybe so. But the imprint of CRI, a label
enormously respected within the field, lent prestige to a
composer's recording and provided assurance that it would be
maintained. If savvy young composers are becoming desk-top
record producers, it's because they feel they have no choice.
And will New World be as open to new projects? What will happen to
projects already in the pipeline at CRI?
For example, the New York-based pianist Donald Berman, who gave
a recital of works by Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles last week
at the Miller Theater, had a notable critical success in 1999
with his CRI album "The Unknown Ives." This was to be the first
in a series of three Ives recordings. Mr. Berman had also won
approval for a CRI recording of the complete piano music by
Ruggles.
With the demise of CRI, Mr. Berman has had to start all over at
New World. Mr. Marotta has signed a letter of intent declaring
that his company would like to complete these projects, provided
that Mr. Berman can secure solid financing.
Meanwhile, other companies are noticing the success of the London
Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony in distributing their
own cd's. During the 1950's and 60's the Louisville Orchestra
built up a now historic archive of recordings of works by American
composers. Last month, the Santa Fe Music Group announced that
it was releasing cd versions of four albums from the orchestra's
First Edition series. And a Canadian company, American Disc,
is offering a service to digitize the archive of any record
label, large or small.
Consumers who doubt that an online future for the recording
industry is coming should consider this: just five years ago,
no one could have guessed that the San Francisco Symphony would
be better off producing its own recordings than working under
contract to the conglomerate BMG, its former company. New World's
plan to digitize the CRI catalog, which awaits only the approval
of the New York State attorney general's office, seems a small
but decisive step thoward that future.
Robert Berkoff...
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