Cedille Records

Biography

Cedille Records (cedillerecords.org) is the independent record label of The Chicago Classical Recording Foundation.

In 1989, James Ginsburg founded Cedille Records, as a for-profit classical music recording company featuring Chicago-area musicians. It was the first Chicago-based record label directed towards recording local musicians. Ginsburg's vision for Cedille was "to record local musicians overlooked by the major labels." Cedille Records was, and remains, the only Chicago-based classical label since Mercury Living Presence in the 1950s. In 1994, Cedille Records was transformed into a not-for-profit record label under the umbrella of The Chicago Classical Recording Foundation. This switch has allowed the label to pursue more large-scale projects.

Each year, Cedille Records develops between six and nine new projects. To date, Cedille Records has released 125 original recordings and is scheduled to release four more recordings in 2011. Most recently the label has released "The Pulitzer Project" a CD featuring Chicago's Grant Park Symphony Orchestra which includes two world premier recordings: William Shuman's "A Free Song" (Pulitzer 1943) and Leo Sowerby's "Canticle of the Sun" (Pulitzer 1946).

Several CD's released on the label have won or been nominated for Grammy Awards. In 2004 Brahms & Joachim Violin Concertos was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical and in 2005 Robert Kurka Symphonic Works was nominated in the same catetgory. In 2008 the ensemble eighth blackbird won the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance for their album strange imaginary animals released on Cedille. In the same year, Judith Sherman won the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Classical for her work with the label. strange imaginary animals was included among her production credits along with Jennifer Koh's album String Poetic, which was nominated in the Best Chamber Music Performance category in the same year. In 2009, Ursula Oppens' CD Oppens Plays Carter was nominated for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra) in 2009[6]. Most of those nominated for Grammy Awards and and an additional 31 albums released on the label have received Classics Today's highest, 10/10, rating.