Orion Records was a primarily classical record label active from the late 1960s until 1988. It grew out of an earlier, Canadian label, Baroque Records, founded by former

Everest Records Everest Records was a record label based in Bayside, Long Island, started by Harry D. Belock and Bert Whyte in May 1958. It was devoted mainly to classical music. History The idea for starting a label was related by electronics inventor Harr ...

executive Giveon Cornfield.Siskind, Jacob
"Record World"
''

The Montreal Gazette The ''Montreal Gazette'', formerly titled ''The Gazette'', is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Three other daily English-language newspapers shuttered at various times during the second half of th ...

'', 12 May 1973, p. 32, accessed 1 July 2010 After subsuming portions of Baroque's catalogue, Orion specialized in recording promising young artists; some, such as harpsichordist-organist

Kenneth Gilbert Kenneth Albert Gilbert (December 16, 1931 – April 15, 2020) was a Canadian harpsichordist, organist, musicologist, and music educator. Biography Born in Montreal, Gilbert studied at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal under ...

and clarinetist

Richard Stoltzman Richard Leslie Stoltzman (born July 12, 1942) is an American clarinetist. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, he spent his early years in San Francisco, California, and Cincinnati, Ohio, graduating from Woodward High School in 1960. Today, Stoltzman is part ...

, went on to significant recording careers for larger labels.Serinus, Jason Victor, "The Return of Orion Classics," ''Stereophile'', March 11, 2007, accessed November 22, 2009
/ref> Taking advantage of personal connections, Cornfield secured for Orion an association with the Menuhin Foundation, improving the label's access to retail channels, and arranged for distribution by Everest. Orion's catalogue would eventually list some 600 titles, and the label had its share of awards—several Grand Prix du Disques, two "Recordings of Special Merit" from Stereo Review, and the Grand Prix International du Disque Liszt 1977-but sales were small, generally less than 25 copies of any given title annually, and the company relied on financial infusions from Cornfield to remain in business. An exception was one of the label's rare non-classical issues, a collection of torch songs recorded by Anita Ellis; with a few thousand copies sold, it was the label's most successful release. Due to conflict with other firms using the name Orion, the firm's name was changed to ORION MASTER RECORDINGS, LLC. As the

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Oc ...

decimated the market for conventional records, in 1988 Cornfield opted to retire rather than retool the company's output for the digital era. He donated the Orion archives to the University of Hawaii with the proviso he could reissue recordings at will. The bulk of Orion's archives are being reactivated (streaming) on two Naxos web sites: ClassicsOnLine.com and NaxosMusicLibrary.com. Currently (November 2014) over 750 Orion albums are now available on the Naxos websites.

References

{{Authority control Record labels established in 1968 Record labels disestablished in 1988 Classical music record labels Defunct record labels of Canada 1968 establishments in Canada