Composers Recordings, Inc. (CRI) was an American record label dedicated to the recording of
contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music is Western art music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st-century classical music, 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 Modernism (music), post-tonal music after the death of ...
by American composers. It was founded in
1954
Events
January
* January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting.
* January 7 – Georgetown–IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head ...
by
Otto Luening
Otto Clarence Luening (June 15, 1900 – September 2, 1996) was a German-American composer and conductor, and flutist. He was an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music.
Biography
Luening was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to German par ...
,
Douglas Moore
Douglas Stuart Moore (August 10, 1893 – July 25, 1969) was an American composer, songwriter, organist, pianist, Conducting, conductor, educator, actor, and author. A composer who mainly wrote works with an American subject, his music is genera ...
, and
Oliver Daniel
Oliver Daniel (November 24, 1911 – December 30, 1990) was an American arts administrator, musicologist, and composer.
He worked as a music executive for CBS, then took a job at BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated), creating that organization's C ...
, and based in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
.
The label released over 600 recordings on LP, cassette, and CD. It went out of business in
2003
2003 was designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Fresh water, Freshwater.
In 2003, a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition 2003 invasion of Iraq, invaded Iraq, starting the Iraq War.
Demographic ...
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
2006 was designated as the International Year of Deserts and Desertification.
Events
January
* January 1– 4 – Russia temporarily cuts shipment of natural gas to Ukraine during a price dispute.
* January 12 – A stampede during t ...
.
Selected composers
*
Samuel Adler
*
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 ...
*
Aaron Avshalomov
*
Jacob Avshalomov
Jacob Avshalomov (March 28, 1919 – April 25, 2013) was a composer and conductor.
Early life and education
Jacob Avshalomov was born on March 28, 1919, in Tsingtao, China. Note: Profile by David Campbell. His father was Aaron Avshalomov, th ...
*
Milton Babbitt
Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He was a Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, recognized for his serial and electronic music.
Biography ...
*
Samuel Barber
Samuel Osmond Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer, pianist, conductor (music), conductor, baritone, and music educator, and one of the most celebrated composers of the mid-20th century. Principally influenced ...
*
Jennifer Margaret Barker[''Nyvaigs'', CRI862, 2000]
*
Leslie Bassett
*
Irwin Bazelon
Irwin Bazelon (June 4, 1922 in Evanston, Illinois, Evanston, Illinois – August 2, 1995) was an Americans, American composer of contemporary classical music.
Contemporary American composer Irwin Bazelon's music is known for its interesting ...
*
William Bergsma
William Laurence Bergsma (April 1, 1921 – March 18, 1994) was an American composer and teacher. He was long associated with Juilliard School, where he taught composition, until he moved to the University of Washington as head of their music ...
*
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidore Beilin; May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was a Russian-born American composer and songwriter. His music forms a large part of the Great American Songbook. Berlin received numerous honors including an Acade ...
*
Chester Biscardi
*
Marc Blitzstein
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein (March 2, 1905January 22, 1964), was an American composer, lyricist, and Libretto, librettist. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-Trade union, union musical ''The Cradle Will Rock'', directed by Orson Welles, ...
*
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 ...
*
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 Chi ...
*
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 A ...
*
Margaret Brouwer
Margaret Brouwer (born February 8, 1940, in Ann Arbor, Michigan) is an American composer and composition teacher. She founded the Blue Streak Ensemble chamber music group.
Biography
Brouwer studied at Oberlin College, graduating in 1962, and re ...
*
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, ...
*
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...
*
Ronald Caltabiano
Ronald Caltabiano (born December 7, 1959) is an American arts administrator and composer of contemporary classical music, with his music showing elements of modernism and romanticism.
He holds B.M., M.M., and D.M.A. degrees from the Juilliard Scho ...
*
Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (December 11, 1908 – November 5, 2012) was an American modernist composer who was one of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century. He combined elements of European modernism and American " ...
*
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 Univ ...
*
Chen Yi
*
John Corigliano
John Paul Corigliano (born February 16, 1938) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. With over 100 compositions, he has won accolades including a Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and a ...
*
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 ...
*
Henry Cowell
Henry Dixon Cowell (; March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, writer, pianist, publisher, teacher Marchioni, Tonimarie (2012)"Henry Cowell: A Life Stranger Than Fiction" ''The Juilliard Journal''. Retrieved 19 June 2022.C ...
*
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 ...
*
David Diamond
*
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 an ...
*
Judy Dunaway
Judy Dunaway (born 1964, in Mississippi) is a conceptual sound artist, avant-garde composer, free improvisor and creator of sound installations who is primarily known for her sound works for latex balloons. Since 1990 she has created over thirty ...
*
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, graduate ...
*
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 indeterminacy in music, a development associated with the experimental New York School o ...
*
Scott Fields
Scott Fields (born September 30, 1952Press release from New Arts International for his 2024 album Throws. Some sources list 1960 as his birth year. in Chicago, Illinois) is a guitarist, composer, and bandleader. He is best known for blending mus ...
*
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 note ...
*
Vivian Fine
Vivian Fine (28 September 1913 – 20 March 2000) was an American composer.
Life
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 Chicago Mu ...
*
Ross Lee Finney
Ross Lee Finney (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 and the Un ...
*
Gene Gutchë
Gene Gutchë (born Romeo Maximilian Eugene Ludwig Gutschë; 3 July 1907, Berlin – 15 November 2000, White Bear Lake, Minnesota) was a German composer active primarily in the United States.
Gutchë earned degrees in business and economics but al ...
*
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 ...
*
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 ancestry ...
*
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 ...
*
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 Berke ...
*
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 ...
*
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 to ...
*
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 Par ...
*
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, actuary and businessman. Ives was among the earliest renowned American composers to achieve recognition on a global scale. His music was largely ignored d ...
*
Philip James
Philip Frederick Wright James (May 17, 1890 – November 1, 1975) was an American composer, conductor and music educator.
Life
James was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. At an early age he began piano, violin and theory lessons, and served a ...
*
Leroy Jenkins
*
Tom Johnson
*
Ben Johnston
*
Samuel Jones
*
Victoria Jordanova
*
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 direct ...
*
Guy Klucevsek
Guy Klucevsek (February 26, 1947 – May 22, 2025) was an American accordionist and composer known for his fusion of polka, minimalism and experimental music. He began playing accordion at age five and later studied at the California Institute of ...
*
Barbara Kolb
Barbara Kolb (February 10, 1938 – October 21, 2024) was an American composer and educator, the first woman to win the Rome Prize in musical composition. Her music features sound masses of colorful textures, impressionistic sounds and atonal vo ...
*
Ernst Krenek
Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a study of Johannes Ock ...
*
Meyer Kupferman
*
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. Thou ...
*
David Lang
*
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 emigrate ...
*
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 ...
*
Fred Lerdahl
Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl (born March 10, 1943) is an American music theorist and composer. Best known for his work on musical grammar, Music cognition, cognition, Rhythm, rhythmic theory, and pitch space, he and the linguist Ray Jackendoff d ...
*
Otto Luening
Otto Clarence Luening (June 15, 1900 – September 2, 1996) was a German-American composer and conductor, and flutist. He was an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music.
Biography
Luening was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to German par ...
*
Tod Machover
Tod Machover (born November 24, 1953, in Mount Vernon, New York), is a composer and an innovator in the application of technology in music. He is the son of Wilma Machover, a piano, pianist and Carl Machover, a computer scientist.
He was named ...
*
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 ...
*
William Mayer
*
Barton McLean
*
Priscilla McLean
Priscilla McLean (née Taylor; born May 27, 1942) is an American composer, performer, video artist, writer, and music reviewer.
Life
Priscilla Taylor was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, the daughter of business manager Conrad Taylor and school ...
*
Jacques de Menasce
*
Peter Mennin
Peter Mennin (born Mennini; May 17, 1923 – June 17, 1983) was a prominent American composer, teacher and administrator. In 1958, he was named Director of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and in 1962 became President of the Juilliard Sch ...
*
Jeffrey Mumford
*
Alwin Nikolais
Alwin Nikolais (November 25, 1910 – May 8, 1993) was an American choreographer, dancer, composer, musician, and teacher. He created the Nikolais Dance Theatre, and was known for his self-designed innovative costume, lighting, and production des ...
*
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 Center ...
*
Hall Overton
Hall Franklin Overton (February 23, 1920 – November 24, 1972) was an American composer, jazz pianist and music teacher.
Life
He was born in Bangor, Michigan, the first of the three sons of Stanford and Ruth (Barnes) Overton. He grew up in Gra ...
*
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 com ...
*
P. Q. Phan
*
Tobias Picker
Tobias Picker (born July 18, 1954) is an American composer, pianist, and Conductor (music), conductor, noted for his orchestral works ''Old and Lost Rivers'', ''Keys To The City (orchestral work), Keys To The City'', and ''The Encantadas (orches ...
*
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Many of his songs became Standard (music), standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway the ...
*
Shulamit Ran
Shulamit Ran (; 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 the Pulitzer Prize ...
*
Bernard Rands
Bernard Rands (born 2 March 1934 in Sheffield, England) is a British and American contemporary classical composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna ...
*
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 he also took lessons in coun ...
*
Wallingford Riegger
Wallingford Constantine Riegger ( ; April 29, 1885 – April 2, 1961) was an American modernist composer and pianist, best known for his orchestral and modern dance music. He was born in Albany, Georgia, but spent most of his career in New York Ci ...
*
Vittorio Rieti
Vittorio Rieti (28 January 1898 – 19 February 1994) was an Italian and American composer.
Biography
Rieti was born to a family of Jewish descent in Alexandria, Kingdom of Egypt. He later moved to Milan to study economics. Subsequently, he stud ...
*
Neil Rolnick
Neil Burton Rolnick (born October 22, 1947) is an American composer and educator living in New York City.
Life
Rolnick was born in Dallas, Texas, and studied English literature at Harvard University where he received a BA in 1969. He then turned ...
*
Ned Rorem
Ned Miller Rorem (October 23, 1923 – November 18, 2022) was an American composer of contemporary classical music and a writer. Best known for his art songs, which number over 500, Rorem was considered the leading American of his time writing i ...
*
Dane Rudhyar
Dane Rudhyar (March 23, 1895 – September 13, 1985), born Daniel Chennevière, was an American author, modernist composer, painter and humanistic astrologer. He was a pioneer of modern transpersonal astrology.
Biography
Dane Rudhyar was born ...
*
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. From 1977 up to his eventual death, he lived mainly in Be ...
*
Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions (December 28, 1896March 16, 1985) was an American composer, teacher, and writer on music. He had started his career writing in a neoclassical style, but gradually moved towards complex harmonies and postromanticism, a ...
*
Judith Shatin
Judith Shatin (Allen) (born November 21, 1949) is an American composer. Currently, she is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor at the University of Virginia. She also founded and is Director of the Virginia Center for Computer Music.Alice Shields
Alice Shields (born Alice Ferree Shields, Manhattan, New York, February 18, 1943) is an American classical composer. She is one of the pioneers of electronic music, and is particularly known for her cross-cultural operas.
Her work is influence ...
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Hale Smith
Hale Smith (June 29, 1925 – November 24, 2009) was an American composer, arranger, and pianist.De Lerma, Dominique-Rene"African Heritage Symphonic Series" Liner note essay. Cedille CDR061.
Biography
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he learned pian ...
*
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 instruc ...
*
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 pairing which has shaped much of his life and mu ...
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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 neoclassic ...
*
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 piani ...
*
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 ...
*
Lester Trimble
*
Richard Aaker Trythall
*
Chinary Ung
Chinary Ung ( ) (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 studies with Chou Wen-chung and M ...
*
Vladimir Ussachevsky
Vladimir Alexeevich Ussachevsky (November 3, 1911 in Hailar, China – January 2, 1990 in New York, New York) was a Russian-American composer, particularly known for his work in electronic music.
Biography
Vladimir Ussachevsky was born in ...
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Robert Ward
*
Richard Wernick
Richard Wernick (January 16, 1934 – April 25, 2025) was 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.
Life and career
Wernick be ...
*
Robert Willoughby
*
Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe (25 August 1902, Berlin – 4 April 1972, New York City) was a German-born American composer. He was associated with interdisciplinary modernism, with affiliations ranging from the Bauhaus, Berlin agitprop theater and the kibbutz mov ...
*
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 also performed as a pianist and conductor. Wuorinen composed more than 270 works: orchestral music, c ...
*
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 artist ...
*
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. Ziporyn h ...
See also
*
List of record labels
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File:AmMusicBunk78.jpg
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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, ...
References
External links
Composers Recordings Inc. Records, 1946-2007Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
{{Authority control
Record labels established in 1954
Record labels disestablished in 2003
Contemporary classical music
20th-century classical music
Classical music record labels
Defunct record labels of the United States
1954 establishments in New York (state)
2003 disestablishments in New York (state)
Defunct companies based in New York City