NASHVILLE, Tenn. (August 1, 2008)-On August 1, 2008, Naxos of America, the #1 independent classical music distributor in the United States, begins physical and digital distribution of Delos. This California-based classical label was the first independent label in the country to offer compact discs.
Founded in 1973 by Amelia S. Haygood, Delos was named for the birthplace of Apollo, god of the sun, light, healing, music, and the arts. After Ms. Haygood’s death in March 2007, pianist Carol Rosenberger, who served as director of artists and repertory and is a longtime Delos recording artist, became its director.
Ms. Rosenberger has commented, “Amelia’s pioneering spirit, her commitment to artists, and her insistence on the highest quality will continue to be our muse. She would be happy that Delos is moving forward hand-in-hand with Naxos of America, and that Delos ‘evergreens’ and new recordings alike have such strong advocates. She would applaud Naxos’ intense commitment to classical music and innovative ways of bringing it to a wide public.”
A musical trailblazer, Amelia Haygood began a second vocation after a long and successful career as a psychotherapist. For Delos’ 30th anniversary, Ms. Haygood recalled her first years with the company, “running around the country with my LP-size briefcase, hand-carrying samples of our first releases to new friends and acquaintances in press, radio and retail. Some said I was foolish; some said I was brave. But most everyone was interested in the idea of a label formed to give outstanding American artists an international platform.”
Now in its 35th year, Delos’ catalog now boasts nearly 500 titles and features some of the most honored names in classical music from theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore to classical music luminaries including Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Ewa Podles, Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Janos Starker, Jean Pierre Rampal, Arleen Auger, Eugenia Zuckerman, Gerard Schwarz, David Shifrin, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Dennis Keene. Other acclaimed Delos artists include Korean-American soprano Hei-Kyung Hong and young opera stars Olga Guryakova, Marina Domashenko, and Daniil Shtoda.
Additionally, Delos has received worldwide recognition for its ambitious series with the famed Moscow Chamber Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra of Russia under Constantine Orbelian. Three superb American orchestras also are Delos recording artists: the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, under Andrew Litton; the Oregon Symphony, under James DePreist; and the New Jersey Symphony, under Zdenek Macal.
Delos also has been at the forefront of recording technology and innovations. In 1979, Ms.Haygood began working closely with inventor Thomas Stockham and his prototype Soundstream digital recording process. The company’s first digital recordings were released in that year and featured trumpet virtuoso-and now conductor-Gerard Schwarz. Delos also was one of the first American labels to embrace SACD; it has released 12 SACD titles and continues to record in multi-channel DSD. The label has won numerous accolades and awards, including a Grammy® Award in 2001 for Sound Engineering, awarded to Delos’ Director of Recording, John Eargle. Virtually every major audio publication worldwide has recognized Delos for its highest achievement in quality recording.
In addition to its core catalog, Delos is widely known for its concept recordings, which began in 1980 with Carol Rosenberger’s Water Music of the Impressionists (one of the label’s first digital recordings). Another early recording, Perchance to Dream - Lullabies for Children and Adults, served as a springboard for the label’s groundbreaking “Family Classics” series, which has brought the communicative and healing power of classical music into the lives of people of all ages.
Delos director and pianist Carol Rosenberger has produced and co-produced some of the label’s most distinguished recordings. Her series of concept recordings began with Water Music of the Impressionists, which was selected by Stereo Review as one of the 25 Best Classical Compact Discs of all time; by Gramophone as a Recording of the Year; and by Billboard as an All-Time Great Recording. The Impressionistic Night Moods was its successful sequel, and a second water music disc, Singing on the Water, included Barcarolles written especially for the album by Richard Rodney Bennett and David Diamond.
As a concert pianist, Ms. Rosenberger’s distinguished recital programs and guest appearances with orchestras have carried her to myriad European and American cities. Her recordings for Delos have garnered a GRAMMY® Award nomination, Gramophone’s Critic’s Choice Award, Stereo Review’s Best Classical Compact Disc, Billboard’s All Time Great Recording, and CD Review’s “10/10.” Her series of recordings with conductor Gerard Schwarz includes concertos by Beethoven, Shostakovich, Haydn, Falla, and Strauss with the London and Seattle symphony orchestras and the Scottish, New York, and Los Angeles chamber orchestras. Her recording of Hindemith’s The Four Temperaments with conductor James DePreist and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was an instant classic.
Born in Detroit, Ms. Rosenberger studied in the U.S. with Webster Aitken and Katja Andy; in Paris with the legendary Nadia Boulanger; and in Vienna with harpsichordist and Baroque scholar Eta Harich-Schneider and Schenker theorist Franz Eibner.
Amelia S. Haygood (1919-2007) was the guiding force behind Delos, and for close to 35 years, she maintained standard-setting quality in artistic excellence, integration of new technology, innovative presentation, and careful attention to every aspect of production.
Born in Gainesville, Florida in 1919, Ms. Haygood studied at the Sorbonne and later worked for the U.S. State Department. With a deep, caring nature and prodigious intellect, she developed an interest in psychology after her marriage to psychologist J. Douglas Haygood, taking graduate courses in medicine and clinical psychology and eventually working in private practice alongside him for close to two decades. After his death, she joined the Los Angeles County Probation Department, where she developed a ground-breaking pilot treatment program designed for the most difficult juvenile offenders and their families.
In 1973, Ms. Haygood made another life-changing move after nursing a friend through a terminal illness: she founded Delos, thus embracing her lifelong passion for music and her interest in sound technology, psychoacoustics, and the physics of music. Believing as she did that music had the immense power to reach and heal people, Delos was a natural extension of the work she already had been doing for decades in psychotherapy and family counseling. In the three-and-a-half decades that followed, artists who have recorded for the label have included singers of the standing of Arleen Auger, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Ewa Podles; the cellist Janos Starker, flautists Jean-Pierre Rampal and Eugenia Zukerman and clarinetist David Shifrin; and the conductors James DePreist, Andrew Litton, Zdeňek Mácal, Constantine Orbelian, Eugene Ormandy, and Gerard Schwarz, who began his recording career with Delos as a trumpeter.
When she died in 2007, conductor James DePreist wrote “Amelia was there from the start. Long before there was a Delos it was her dedication to Carol and other American artists without an entré into the world of commercial recordings, her feistiness and her humor … Amelia was the plow that broke the status quo plains of American recordings, but beyond that she was a passionate advocate for her artists and a friend now truly, truly missed.”
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A feature interview with the great Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky as he talks about his CD Heroes and Villains, about singing Verdi, and about working with Amelia Haygood, founder of the Delos CD label.
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