Composers Recordings, Inc. (CRI) was an American record label dedicated to the recording of
contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included se ...
Otto Luening
Otto Clarence Luening (June 15, 1900 – September 2, 1996) was a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music.
Luening was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to German parents, Eugene, a conducto ...
,
Douglas Moore
Douglas Stuart Moore (August 10, 1893 – July 25, 1969) was an American composer, songwriter, organist, pianist, conductor, educator, actor, and author. A composer who mainly wrote works with an American subject, his music is generally charact ...
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
.
The label released over 600 recordings on LP, cassette, and CD. It went out of business in
2003
File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, disintegrated during reentry into Atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an 2002– ...
due to financial pressures, and the rights to CRI's recordings were transferred to
New World Records
New World Records is a record label that was established in 1975 through a Rockefeller Foundation grant to celebrate America's bicentennial (1976) by producing a 100-LP anthology, with American music from many genres.2006.
Dominick Argento
Dominick Argento (October 27, 1927 – February 20, 2019) was an American composer known for his lyric operatic and choral music. Among his best known pieces are the operas '' Postcard from Morocco'', '' Miss Havisham's Fire'', ''The Masque of An ...
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Aaron Avshalomov
Aaron Avshalomov (russian: Ааро́н Авшало́мов; 11 November 1894 – 16 April 1965) was a Russian-born Jewish composer. His work included several ballets, two operas, a violin concerto, four symphonies and a flute concerto.
Ea ...
Milton Babbitt
Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.
Biography
Babbitt was born in Philadelphia to Albert E ...
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Samuel Barber
Samuel Osmond Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator, and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century. The music critic Donal Henahan said, "Proba ...
Leslie Bassett
Leslie Raymond Bassett (22 January 1923 – 4 February 2016) was an American composer of classical music. Bassett received the 1966 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Bassett had a lifelong relationship with the University of Michigan School of Musi ...
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin; yi, ישראל ביילין; May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was a Russian-American composer, songwriter and lyricist. His music forms a large part of the Great American Songbook.
Born in Imperial Russ ...
Marc Blitzstein
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein (March 2, 1905January 22, 1964), was an American composer, lyricist, and librettist. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro- union musical '' The Cradle Will Rock'', directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the ...
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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 i ...
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Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945) is an American experimental composer, educator, music theorist, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing saxophones, particularly the alto. Braxton grew up on the South Side of ...
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Martin Bresnick
Martin Bresnick (born 1946) is a composer of contemporary classical music, film scores and experimental music.
Education and early career
Bresnick grew up in the Bronx, and is a graduate of New York City's specialized High School of Music and Ar ...
Earle Brown
Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems. Brown was the creator of "open form," a style of musical construction that has influenced many composers since� ...
Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (December 11, 1908 – November 5, 2012) was an American modernism (music), modernist composer. One of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century, he combined elements of European modernism a ...
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Chou Wen-chung
Chou Wen-chung (; July 28, 1923 – October 25, 2019) was a Chinese American composer of contemporary classical music. He emigrated in 1946 to the United States and received his music training at the New England Conservatory and Columbia Univer ...
John Corigliano
John Paul Corigliano Jr. (born February 16, 1938) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. His scores, now numbering over one hundred, have won him the Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, ...
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George Crumb
George Henry Crumb Jr. (24 October 1929 – 6 February 2022) was an American composer of avant-garde contemporary classical music. Early in his life he rejected the widespread modernist usage of serialism, developing a highly personal musical ...
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Henry Cowell
Henry Dixon Cowell (; March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, writer, pianist, publisher and teacher. Marchioni, Tonimarie (2012)"Henry Cowell: A Life Stranger Than Fiction" ''The Juilliard Journal''. Retrieved 19 June 20 ...
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Alvin Curran
Alvin Curran (born December 13, 1938) is an American composer, performer, improviser, sound artist, and writer. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and lives and works in Rome, Italy. He is the co-founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Richard ...
Jacob Druckman
Jacob Raphael Druckman (June 26, 1928 – May 24, 1996) was an American composer born in Philadelphia.
Life
A graduate of the Juilliard School in 1956, Druckman studied with Vincent Persichetti, Peter Mennin, and Bernard Wagenaar. In 1949 and ...
Donald Erb
Donald Erb (January 17, 1927 – August 12, 2008) was an American composer best known for large orchestral works such as Concerto for Brass and Orchestra and ''Ritual Observances''.
Early years
Erb was born in Youngstown, Ohio, graduat ...
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Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School ...
Irving Fine
Irving Gifford Fine (December 3, 1914 – August 23, 1962) was an American composer. Fine's work assimilated neoclassical, romantic, and serial elements. Composer Virgil Thomson described Fine's "unusual melodic grace" while Aaron Copland noted ...
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Vivian Fine
Vivian Fine (28 September 1913 – 20 March 2000) was an American composer.
Life
Vivian Fine was born in Chicago to David and Rose Fine. A piano prodigy, she became at age five the youngest student ever to be awarded a scholarship at the Chi ...
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Ross Lee Finney
Ross Lee Finney Junior (December 23, 1906–February 4, 1997) was an American composer who taught for many years at the University of Michigan.
Life and career
Born in Wells, Minnesota, Finney received his early training at Carleton College ...
Daron Hagen
Daron Aric Hagen ( ; born November 4, 1961) is an American composer, writer, and filmmaker.
Biography
Early life
Daron Hagen was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and grew up in New Berlin, a suburb west of Milwaukee. Hagen was the youngest of ...
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Roy Harris
Roy Ellsworth Harris (February 12, 1898 – October 1, 1979) was an American composer. He wrote music on American subjects, and is best known for his Symphony No. 3.
Life
Harris was born in Chandler, Oklahoma on February 12, 1898. His ancest ...
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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 ...
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Robert Helps
Robert Eugene Helps (b. Passaic, New Jersey, United States, September 23, 1928; d. Tampa, Florida, United States, November 24, 2001) was an American pianist and composer.
Career
Helps studied at the universities of Columbia (1947–49) and Ber ...
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Lee Hoiby
Lee Henry Hoiby (February 17, 1926 – March 28, 2011) was an American composer and classical pianist. Best known as a composer of operas and songs, he was a disciple of composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Like Menotti, his works championed lyricism at ...
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Karel Husa
Karel Husa (August 7, 1921 – December 14, 2016) was a Czech-born classical composer and conductor, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Music and 1993 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. In 1954, he emigrated t ...
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Andrew Imbrie
Andrew Welsh Imbrie (April 6, 1921 – December 5, 2007) was an American contemporary classical music composer and pianist.
Career
Imbrie was born in New York City and began his musical training as a pianist when he was 4. In 1937, he went to P ...
Victoria Jordanova Victoria Jordanova is an American composer, harpist, and media artist born in 1952 in former Yugoslavia, active in the field of contemporary classical music, experimental music and media arts. Her work encompasses contemporary classical composition ...
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Aaron Jay Kernis
Aaron Jay Kernis (born January 15, 1960) is a Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning American composer serving as a member of the Yale School of Music faculty. Kernis spent 15 years as the music advisor to the Minnesota Orchestra and as Dire ...
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Guy Klucevsek
Guy Klucevsek (born February 26, 1947) is an American-born accordionist and composer. Klucevsek is one of relatively few accordion players active in new music, jazz and free improvisation.
Klucevsek was born in New York City, and raised outside ...
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Barbara Kolb
Barbara Kolb (born February 10, 1939) is an American composer. Her music uses sound masses and often creates vertical structures through simultaneous rhythmic or melodic units ( motifs or figures). Kolb's musical style can be identified by her ...
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Ernst Krenek
Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a stud ...
Ezra Laderman
Ezra Laderman (29 June 1924 – 28 February 2015) was an American composer of classical music. He was born in Brooklyn.
Biography
Laderman was of Jewish heritage. His parents, Isidor and Leah, both emigrated to the United States from Poland. Th ...
Benjamin Lees
Benjamin Lees (January 8, 1924 – May 31, 2010) was an American composer of classical music.
Early life
Lees was born Benjamin George Lisniansky in Harbin, Manchuria, of Russian- Jewish descent. Lees was still an infant when his family emigr ...
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John Anthony Lennon
John Anthony Lennon (born 1950 in Greensboro, North Carolina) is an American composer of contemporary classical music based in Georgia.
Biography
Early life and education
John Anthony Lennon was born in Greensboro, North Carolina and raised in ...
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Fred Lerdahl
Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl (born March 10, 1943, in Madison, Wisconsin) is the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a composer and music theorist best known for his work on musical grammar and c ...
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Otto Luening
Otto Clarence Luening (June 15, 1900 – September 2, 1996) was a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music.
Luening was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to German parents, Eugene, a conducto ...
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Donald Martino
Donald James Martino (May 16, 1931 – December 8, 2005) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer.
Biography
Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Martino attended Plainfield High School. He began as a clarinetist, playing jazz for fun and ...
Peter Mennin
Peter Mennin (born Mennini) (May 17, 1923 in Erie, Pennsylvania – June 17, 1983 in New York City) was a prominent American composer, teacher and administrator. In 1958, he was named Director of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and ...
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Jeffrey Mumford
Jeffrey Mumford (born June 22, 1955) is a U.S. composer whose orchestral works have been performed by the National Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Cincinnati S ...
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music.
She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Ce ...
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Hall Overton
Hall Franklin Overton (February 23, 1920 – November 24, 1972) was an American composer, jazz pianist and music teacher. He was born in Bangor, Michigan, the first of the three sons of Stanford and Ruth (Barnes) Overton. He grew up in Grand Rapi ...
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Harry Partch
Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century co ...
Tobias Picker
Tobias Picker (born July 18, 1954) is an American composer, artistic director, and pianist, noted for his orchestral works '' Old and Lost Rivers'', ''Keys To The City'', and ''The Encantadas'', as well as his operas ''Emmeline'', '' Fantastic ...
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Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Many of his songs became standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway and in film.
Born to ...
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Shulamit Ran
Shulamit Ran ( he, שולמית רן; born October 21, 1949, in Tel Aviv, Israel) is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York City at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her th ...
Gardner Read
Gardner Read (January 2, 1913 in Evanston, Illinois – November 10, 2005 in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts) was an American composer and musical scholar.
His first musical studies were in piano and organ, and she also took lessons in c ...
Vittorio Rieti
Vittorio Rieti (January 28, 1898 – February 19, 1994) was a Jewish- Italian-American composer. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Rieti moved to Milan to study economics. He subsequently studied in Rome under Respighi and Casella, and lived there u ...
Ned Rorem
Ned Rorem (October 23, 1923 – November 18, 2022) was an American composer of contemporary classical music and writer. Best known for his art songs, which number over 500, Rorem was the leading American of his time writing in the genre. Althoug ...
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Dane Rudhyar
Dane Rudhyar (March 23, 1895 – September 13, 1985), born Daniel Chennevière, was a American author, modernist composer and humanistic astrologer. He was a pioneer of modern transpersonal astrology.
Biography
Dane Rudhyar was born in Paris on ...
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Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Anthony Rzewski ( ; April 13, 1938 – June 26, 2021) was an American composer and pianist, considered to be one of the most important American composer-pianists of his time. His major compositions, which often incorporate social an ...
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Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions (December 28, 1896March 16, 1985) was an American composer, teacher and musicologist. He had initially started his career writing in a neoclassical style, but gradually moved further towards more complex harmonies and ...
Harvey Sollberger
Harvey Sollberger (born May 11, 1938 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa) is an American composer, flutist, and conductor specializing in contemporary classical music.
Life
Sollberger holds an M.A. degree from Columbia University, where his composition instru ...
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Tan Dun
Tan Dun (, ; born 18 August 1957) is a Chinese-born American composer and conductor. A leading figure of contemporary classical music, he draws from a variety of Western and Chinese influences, a dichotomy which has shaped much of his life and ...
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Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclassi ...
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Francis Thorne
Francis Thorne (June 23, 1922 – March 7, 2017) was an American composer of contemporary classical music and grandson of the writer Gustav Kobbé.
Life
Francis Burritt Thorne, Jr. was born in Bay Shore, New York. His father was a ragtime pianis ...
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Joan Tower
Joan Tower (born September 6, 1938)http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx?TabId=2419&State_2872=2&ComposerId_2872=1605 Biography on Schirmer is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by ''The New Y ...
Richard Aaker Trythall
Richard Aaker Trythall (July 25, 1939 – December 21, 2022) was an American and Italian composer and pianist of contemporary classical music.
Early life and education
Trythall was born on July 25, 1939 in Knoxville, Tennessee, the younger b ...
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Chinary Ung
Chinary Ung ( km, អ៊ុង ឈីណារី ) (born November 24, 1942 in Takéo, Cambodia) is a composer currently living in California, United States.
Career
After arriving in the US in 1965 to study clarinet, he turned to composition ...
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Vladimir Ussachevsky
Vladimir Alexeevich Ussachevsky (November 3, 1911 in Hailar, China – January 2, 1990 in New York, New York) was a composer, particularly known for his work in electronic music.
Biography
Vladimir Ussachevsky was born in the Hailar District ...
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Robert Ward Robert Ward may refer to:
Politicians
*Robert Ward (MP for City of York)
* Robert Ward (1754–1831), Irish MP for Wicklow Borough, Killyleagh and Bangor
* Robert Ward (American politician) (1952–2021), American lawyer and politician
* Robert War ...
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Richard Wernick
Richard Wernick (born January 16, 1934, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American composer. He is best known for his chamber and vocal works. His composition ''Visions of Terror and Wonder'' won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Career
Wernick ...
Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe (25 August 1902, Berlin – 4 April 1972, New York City) was a German-Jewish-American composer. He was associated with interdisciplinary modernism, with affiliations ranging from the Bauhaus, Berlin agitprop theater and the kibbutz mo ...
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Charles Wuorinen
Charles Peter Wuorinen (; June 9, 1938 – March 11, 2020) was an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City. He performed his works and other 20th-century music as pianist and conductor.
He composed more than ...
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Zhou Long
Zhou Long (; born July 8, 1953) is a Chinese American composer. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Biography
Zhou Long was born in Beijing, China. Born into an artistic family, he began studying piano from an early age. Due to the art ...
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Evan Ziporyn
Evan Ziporyn (b. Chicago, Illinois, December 14, 1959) is an American composer of post-minimalist music with a cross-cultural orientation, drawing equally from classical music, avant-garde, various world music traditions, and jazz. Zipory ...
See also
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List of record labels
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Lists of record labels cover record labels, brands or trademarks associated with marketing of music recordings and music videos. The lists are organized alphabetically, b ...