1750 Arch Records was an independent record label that focused on experimental and avant garde music, jazz, and classical music.

History

The label, named after the company's address in Berkeley, California, was founded in 1974 by vocalist Thomas Buckner, who was also responsible for starting 1750 Arch Concerts, which presented over a hundred concerts a year for eight years, and the Arch Ensemble, which performed and recorded music by 20th century composers. Over the course of roughly ten years, it released over fifty albums in a wide range of styles, including the complete player piano music of

Conlon Nancarrow Samuel Conlon Nancarrow (; October 27, 1912 – August 10, 1997) was an American-Mexican composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. Nancarrow is best remembered for his ''Studies for Player Piano'', being one of the first ...

. In the early 1980s, 1750 Arch began to wind down its operations, closing in 1984, at which time the master recordings were returned to the composers and musicians. A number of albums were reissued on other labels, including Buckner's Mutable Music.

Releases

;Contemporary music * S-1752 Various Artists: ''10+2: 12 American Text Sound Pieces'' * S-1760 Janet Millard: ''20th Century Flute'' * S-1765 Various Artists: ''New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media'' * S-1768

: ''Complete Studies for Player Piano, Vol. #1'' * S-1771 Joseph Bacon: ''Guitar Music of Villa-Lobos'' * S-1772 Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra: ''

Lou Harrison Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his for ...

: Elegiac Symphony; Robert Hughes: Cadences'' * S-1774

David Rosenboom David Rosenboom (born 1947 in Fairfield, Iowa) is a composer, performer, interdisciplinary artist, author, and educator known for his work in American experimental music. Rosenboom has explored various forms of music, languages for improvisation, ...

and

Don Buchla Donald Buchla (April 17, 1937 – September 14, 2016) was an American pioneer in the field of sound synthesis. Buchla popularized the "West Coast" style of synthesis. He was co-inventor of the voltage controlled modular synthesizer along with Rob ...

: ''Collaboration in Performance'' * S-1775

Stuart Dempster Stuart Dempster (born July 7, 1936 in Berkeley, California) is a trombonist, didjeridu player, improviser, and composer. Biography After Dempster completed his studies at San Francisco State College, he was appointed assistant professor at th ...

: ''In the Great Abbey of Clement VI'' * S-1777 Conlon Nancarrow: ''Complete Studies for Player Piano, Vol. #2'' * S-1779 Charles Amirkhanian: ''Lexical Music'' * S-1780 Mel Graves: ''Three Worlds'' * S-1781 Gardner Jencks: ''Selected Works for Piano, 1942-1980'' * S-1782 Various Artists: ''The Music of

Luigi Dallapiccola Luigi Dallapiccola (3 February 1904 – 19 February 1975) was an Italian composer known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions. Biography Dallapiccola was born in Pisino d'Istria (at the time part of Austria-Hungary, current Pazin, Croati ...

'' * S-1784

John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before Presidency of John Adams, his presidency, he was a leader of ...

: ''

Shaker Loops ''Shaker Loops'' is a 1978 composition by American composer John Adams, originally written for string septet. The original "modular" score, published by Associated Music Publisher, has since been withdrawn and replaced by a 1983 string orchestra v ...

''; ''

Phrygian Gates ''Phrygian Gates'' is a piano piece written by minimalist composer John Adams in 1977–1978. The piece, together with its smaller companion '' China Gates,'' written for the pianist Sarah Cahill, is considered by Adams to be his "opus one". The ...

'' * S-1785 Thomas Buckner,

Gerald Oshita Gerald Oshita (1942–1992) was an American musician, composer, and sound recordist. Oshita, who was of Japanese ancestry, lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and specialized in unusual wind instruments, particularly those of especially low re ...

Roscoe Mitchell Roscoe Mitchell (born August 3, 1940) is an American composer, jazz instrumentalist, and educator, known for being "a technically superb – if idiosyncratic – saxophonist". ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' described him as "one of the key figure ...

: ''New Music for Woodwinds and Voice'' * S-1786 Conlon Nancarrow: ''Complete Studies for Player Piano, Vol. #3'' * S-1787

Susan Allen Susan Allen (born March 27, 1963) is an American politician and former member of the Minnesota House of Representatives. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), she represented District 62B, a southside district encompa ...

: ''New Music for Harp'' * S-1789 Katrina Krimsky: ''Villa-Lobos: The Baby's Family'' * S-1792 Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra: ''

Daniel Kobialka Daniel Kobialka (November 19, 1943 – January 18, 2021) was an American violinist, composer, and music entrepreneur. Biography Kobialka studied violin at the Hartt College of Music. Kobialka was the principal second violinist with the San Fran ...

: Echoes of Secret Silence; Charles Shere: Nightmusic'' * S-1793 Neil B. Rolnick: ''Solos'' * S-1794 Peter Dickson Lopez: ''The Ship of Death'' * S-1795

Henry Brant Henry Dreyfuss Brant (September 15, 1913 – April 26, 2008) was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques. Biography Brant was born ...

: ''Solar Moth''; Daniel Kobialka: ''Autumn Beyond'' * S-1797 Jon English, Candace Natvig: ''Triptych'' * S-1798 Conlon Nancarrow: ''Complete Studies for Player Piano, Vol. #4'' * S-1800 Michael McNabb: ''Computer Music'' * S-1801 Anna Carol Dudley, Ronald Erickson, Earle Shenk: ''The Music of

Charles Seeger Charles Louis Seeger Jr. (December 14, 1886 – February 7, 1979) was an American musicologist, composer, teacher, and folklorist. He was the husband of the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, father of the American folk singers Pete Seeger (1919– ...

(1886-1979)'' * S-1806 Roscoe Mitchell, Gerald Oshita, Tom Buckner: ''Space: An Interesting Breakfast Conversation'' ;Classical music * S-1754

Martial Singher Martial Singher (August 14, 1904 – March 9, 1990) was a French baritone opera singer born in Oloron-Sainte-Marie, Pyrénées-Atlantiques. Initially singing only as a hobby, he was encouraged by then French education minister Édouard Herriot to ...

: ''Opus 70'' * S-1761 Renee Grant-Williams, Dorothy Barnhouse, Alden Gilchrist: ''Brahms Duets'' * S-1762 Jeanne Stark: ''Claude Debussy: Preludes, Book I'' * S-1763 Jeanne Stark: ''Claude Debussy: Preludes, Book II'' * S-1766 Martial Singher, Dorothy Angwin: ''An Album of French Songs'' * S-1767 Bernhard Abramowitsch: ''Schubert: Sonata in B Flat Major; Klaviersuck II'' * S-1783 San Francisco String Quartet: ''A Night in the Garden Court'' * S-1796

Dennis Russell Davies Dennis Russell Davies (born April 16, 1944, in Toledo, Ohio) is an American conductor and pianist. He is chief conductor of the Brno Philharmonic and of the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra. Biography Davies studied piano and conducting at ...

, Charles Holland: ''My Lord What a Mornin ;Early music * S-1751 Musica Mundana: ''

Dufay Guillaume Du Fay ( , ; also Dufay, Du Fayt; 5 August 1397 – 27 November 1474) was a composer and music theorist of early Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered the leading European composer of h ...

: Fifteen Songs'' * S-1753 Music for a While: ''Transformations: Dufay and His Contemporaries'' * S-1756 Paul Hersh, Laurette Goldberg: '' J.S. Bach: The Leipzig Sonatas'' * S-1757 Tom Buckner, Joseph Bacon: ''Wandering in This Place: Elizabethan Lute Songs'' * S-1764 Joseph Bacon: '' Dowland: Fantasies and Dances for the Lute'' * S-1773 Music for a While: ''La Fontaine Amoureuse: Poetry and Music of

Guillaume de Machaut Guillaume de Machaut (, ; also Machau and Machault; – April 1377) was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to ...

(1300-1377)'' * S-1776 Anna Carol Dudley: ''

Henry Purcell Henry Purcell (, rare: ; September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer of Baroque music, most remembered for his more than 100 songs; a tragic opera, Dido and Aeneas, ''Dido and Aeneas''; and his incidental music to a version o ...

: Songs and Grounds'' ;Jazz * S-1755 Infinite Sound: ''Contemporary African-American Music'' * S-1758

Denny Zeitlin Denny Zeitlin (born April 10, 1938) is an American jazz pianist, composer, and clinical professor of psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco. Since 1963, he has recorded more than 100 compositions and was a first-place winner in the ...

with George Marsh and Mel Graves: ''Expansion'' * S-1759 Denny Zeitlin, Ratzo B. Harris, George Marsh: ''Syzygy'' * S-1769

Art Lande Art Lande is an American musician who was born in New York City, United States, on 5 February 1947. Born in New York, Lande began piano at age 4. He attended Williams College and moved to San Francisco in 1969. In 1973 he recorded '' Red Lanta,' ...

: ''The Eccentricities of Earl Dant'' * S-1770 Denny Zeitlin: ''Soundings'' * S-1778 Art Lande: ''The Story of Ba-Ku'' * S-1790

Big Black Big Black was an American punk rock band from Evanston, Illinois, active from 1981 to 1987. Founded first as a solo project by singer and guitarist Steve Albini, the band became a trio with an initial lineup that included guitarist Santiago Dur ...

(Danny Rey): ''Ethnic Fusion'' * S-1791 George Marsh: ''Marshland'' * S-1802

Randy Weston Randolph Edward "Randy" Weston (April 6, 1926 – September 1, 2018) was an American jazz pianist and composer whose creativity was inspired by his ancestral African connection. Weston's piano style owed much to Duke Ellington and Thelonious M ...

: ''Blue'' * S-1804 George Marsh, John Abercrombie: ''Drum Strum'' Sources:

References

{{reflist Record labels established in 1974 Record labels disestablished in 1984 American jazz record labels Experimental music record labels Classical music record labels American independent record labels