Nonesuch Records

Nonesuch Records is an American record company and label owned by Warner Music Group, distributed by Warner Records (formerly called Warner Bros. Records), and based in New York City. Founded by Jac Holzman in 1964 as a budget classical label, Nonesuch has developed into a label that records critically acclaimed music from a wide range of genres. Robert Hurwitz was president of the company from 1984 to 2017.
Upon its formation, Nonesuch operated as a subsidiary label of Elektra Records, which Holzman had launched in 1950. In 1970, Holzman sold Elektra and Nonesuch to Kinney National Company, which became Warner Communications and later part of Time Warner's Warner Music Group.
In the late 1960s, the Explorer Series made the label 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. In 1977, a few of the recordings were chosen for the Voyager Golden Record, and sent into outer space aboard the Voyager spacecraft.
(Read more at Wikipedia.)
== Links To Peel ==
Although Peel became an admirer of the Elektra label during 1966, his final year in the USA, he most probably wasn't aware of Nonesuch, which began as primarily a classical label, its releases far removed from the usual remit of pop radio stations like KMEN, where the DJ was employed. But when he got back to the UK and started working on Radio London, he developed a closer connection to the label through Clive Selwood, who sent him Elektra albums to play on the Perfumed Garden and then became his manager. This may account for some of the baroque music Peel featured on Night Ride, (Nonesuch had made its name by specialising in the baroque repertoire) as well as a couple of the label's early ventures into electronic music which he included in the programme. 
But Nonesuch's biggest influence on the pop and rock scene came through its catalogue of world music releases, known as the Nonesuch Explorer Series. These were easier to obtain than many comparable albums and were programmed and packaged to attract non-specialist listeners. The recordings came from all over the world, from China to Afghanistan to Peru, and helped stimulate interest in world music in the 1970s. Some of the Explorer Series LPs were of genres which had been heard on JP's Night Ride, via the BBC Archive tracks which were a feature of the show (e.g. traditional music of India or Japan, Balinese gamelan music). Peel only played a few tracks from these collections, but they influenced some of the musicians he admired. 
Perhaps the most famous Explorer Series LP is Music Of Bulgaria, originally issued in France in 1955 and appearing on Elektra a few years later before being reissued on Nonesuch. Singers such as David Crosby (in a Rolling Stone interview), Graham Nash and Paul Simon all praised it, and it was a template for the Bulgarian choirs whose records were played by Peel from the 1980s onwards. The label also issued a couple of albums of authentic Bulgarian village music, which JP dipped into in the 1980s, and released in the US Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, the recording of the Bulgarian State Television female choir that Peel had played on his shows after its UK release in 1986.Peel appears to have played the UK release on indie label 4AD, licensed from Disques Cellier of France.
Another influential Explorer Series album was The Real Bahamas In Music And Song, which included some tracks by singer-guitarist Joseph Spence, Andy Kershaw favourite and major influence on Ry Cooder, but its most renowned song is the Pindar Family's "I Bid You Goodnight", which was incorporated by Mike Heron into his "A Very Cellular Song", on the Incredible String Band's LP The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter and later covered by many other artists, including Grateful Dead, Aaron Neville and Robert Plant. (It was also done as a stand-alone piece on the ISB's first Night Ride session). Another of Heron's songs for the ISB, "Air", was, according to its composer, inspired by an Explorer Series album of Tahitian music, The Gauguin Years. In fact, as Elektra artists with an interest in the folk musics of the world, the ISB were aware of the Explorer SeriesReportedly, when the ISB performed at the Newport Folk Festival in 1967, their record company Elektra invited the duo to help themselves from their record warehouse and, to judge from how the band's style developed in the next couple of years, with the use of exotic instruments and unusual blends of different musical styles, Nonesuch Explorer albums may well have been among the items they took home. (It was only later that they found out that Elektra had billed them for the records - after they had also paid Customs fees to import them into the UK). 
Some artists featured in the Explorer Series were able to travel to the West and give concerts, or recorded albums during visits to the USA, but the only one to do a session for Peel was Finbar Furey, as half of Finbar & Eddie Furey. Before that, he had cut a solo album of Irish pipe music for Transatlantic's budget label Xtra, which was licensed for US release on Nonesuch Explorer. The series as a whole gained a cult following and the label's classical releases sometimes sold well, but Nonesuch only achieved commercial success in the popular music charts in the early 1970s, with the release of Joshua Rifkin's albums of the ragtime music of Scott Joplin. Peel played tracks from these and had Joplin in session on his programme. By then, the label was distributed in the UK by Transatlantic Records. 
Like Elektra, Nonesuch went into decline following management changes, but revived in the 1980s, in some way becoming an equivalent of what Elektra had been in the 1960s, with an ability to make less obviously commercial music accessible to general listeners, a varied roster of quality artists and a wide range of musical genres. Although these included many names familiar to Peel listeners, such as Ry Cooder, Randy Newman, Laurie Anderson, Dr. John, Taj Mahal, Brian Eno, Scritti Politti, Terry Riley and Joni Mitchell, this phase of Nonesuch's history didn't seem to interest JP so much, with few tracks on the label showing in his playlists. From the 1980s to the 2000s, Nonesuch tracks were more likely to be heard on Andy Kershaw's shows, with Kershaw favourites such as Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Natalie Merchant among the artists who recorded for the label. Nonesuch artists in the fields of jazz and contemporary classical music were featured on BBC Radio Three shows like Late Junction, in which Peel took an interest, although he didn't play such material on his own programmes. An exception to this was a number of plays on 1999 Peel shows of remixes of minimalist composer Steve Reich. 
The Peel Record Collection includes a recording of J.S. Bach's The Complete Concerti For Harpsichord and Orchestra on Nonesuch, and possibly other classical items on the label he never played on the radio.
== Plays ==
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;1960s
*17 April 1968: Morton Subotnick: Silver Apples Of The Moon (extract from LP of same name)
*08 January 1969: Pennywhistlers: Iz Dolv (Macedonian) (album - A Cool Day And Crooked Corn) Nonesuch Explorer H-72024
;1970s
*15 February 1972: Joshua Rifkin: Maple Leaf Rag (LP – Scott Joplin Piano Rags)
*Radio Luxembourg Tracklistings 2: Joshua Rifkin: Fig-Leaf Rag (LP - Piano Rags By Scott Joplin)
*14 July 1978 : Joan Morris & William Bolcom: Black Denim Trousers & Motorcycle Boots (single)
;1980s
*13 August 1986: Gena Ivanova Bodenova, Nadezhda Georgieva Klecherova, Nadezhda Georgieva Palestova: Ta Shto Mi E Miloj, Mamo (v/a LP - A Harvest, A Shepherd, A Bride: Village Music Of Bulgaria) Nonesuch Explorer
*13 August 1986: Bitov Orchestra: Krivo Horo (v/a LP - A Harvest, A Shepherd, A Bride: Village Music Of Bulgaria) Nonesuch Explorer
*19 August 1986: Vasilka Andonova and Kremena Stancheva: Vetar Vee (album - Village Music Of Bulgaria ((JP - 'or rather more picturesquely') A Harvest A Shepherd A Bride) Nonesuch Explorer
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;1990s
*January 1999 (FSK): Steve Reich: Music For 18 Musicians (Coldcut Remix) (CD - Reich Remixed)
*20 January 1999: Steve Reich: Music For 18 Musicians (Coldcut (12 inch, Steve Reich remixed)
* 03 March 1999: Steve Reich: The Desert Music (FreQ. Nasty & B.L.I.M. remix) (2x12" - Reich Remixed)
*18 March 1999: Steve Reich: Eight Lines (Howie B Remix) (album - Reich Remixed)
* 07 April 1999: Steve Reich: Piano Phase (D*Note's Phased & Konfused Mix) (LP: Reich Remixed)
== Sessions ==
(Nonesuch artistsAs listed on the label's online list of artists as of December 2023 , and therefore including releases after Peel's death in 2004. who recorded Peel sessions, including when on other labels or as members of bands not released by Nonesuch.)
*Black KeysBlack Keys singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach has also recorded for Nonesuch as a solo artist.: (2 sessions, 2003)
*Bjork: (1 session, with Sugarcubes, 1988)
*Eno: (1 session, 1974: 5 sessions with Roxy Music, 1972-3; 1 session with  Fripp & Eno, 1973)
*Fatboy Slim: (4 sessions, with Housemartins, 1985-87)
*Natalie Merchant: (1 session, with 10,000 Maniacs, 1985)
*Randy Newman: (1 session, 1974)
*Robert Plant: (3 sessions, with Led Zeppelin, 1969)
*Joshua Rifkin: (1 session, 1973)
*Scritti Politti: (3 sessions, 1979-82)
==See Also ==
*Record Collection: Classical
*Electronic Music
*Elektra
* World Music
*Bulgaria
*Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares 
==Links==
*Wikipedia
*Discogs
*Official site
==References==
Category:Record Labels