Cedille Records

History

In 1989, James Ginsburg founded Cedille Records as a for-profit classical music recording company featuring Chicago-area musicians. Ginsburg's vision for Cedille was "to record local musicians overlooked by the major labels." Cedille was and remains the only Chicago-based classical label since Mercury Living Presence in the 1950s. In 1994, Cedille was transformed into a not-for-profit record label under the umbrella of the Chicago Classical Recording Foundation.

The label's releases included The Pulitzer Project, an album featuring Chicago's Grant Park Symphony Orchestra which includes two world premier recordings: WilliamShuman's "A Free Song" (Pulitzer 1943) and Leo Sowerby's "Canticle of the Sun" (Pulitzer 1946).

Awards and honors

Several CDs released on the label have won or been nominated for Grammy Awards. In 2004 Brahms & Joachim Violin Concertos was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical and in 2005 Robert Kurka Symphonic Works was nominated in the same category. In 2008 the ensemble eighth blackbird won the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance for their album strange imaginary animals. In the same year, Judith Sherman won the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Classical for her work with the label. strange imaginary animals was included among her production credits along with Jennifer Koh's album String Poetic, which was nominated in the Best Chamber Music Performance category in the same year. In 2009, Ursula Oppens' album Oppens Plays Carter was nominated for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra) in 2009. Most of those nominated for Grammy Awards and an additional thirty-one albums released on the label have received Classics Today's highest rating, 10/10.

The song "Nulla in Mundo Pax Sincera" from A Vivaldi Concert was featured in the documentary Pale Male, an episode of the documentary series Nature on PBS.

Roster