Classic Records’ Big LP Reissue – At CES Classic Records announced a massive LP reissue program for the coming year, showing the continuing and new interest in the supposedly dead format. It includes immediate release of the Diana Krall catalog on Verve, The Jimi Hendrix Collection “Voodoo Child,” John Lee Hooker’s “The Healer,” and a huge series of mono jazz LP reissues from Blue Note – many of them 10-inchers! Later in the year 26 titles from the acclaimed early Everest label – recorded originally on 35mm magnetic film – will be released, plus two titles from Bernie Grundman’s Straight Ahead Records. All of these releases will be 200 gram pressings, a further enhancement of the 180 gram thickness of most previous audiophile repressings, and the Grundman discs will also be made available as DualDiscs.
Ambitious Music Commission Program – The Magnum Opus project originated in 2002, the brainchild of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Kathryn Gould, who was dissatisfied with the new music she was hearing – or not hearing – at the symphony. Magnum Opus stands out from other commissioning projects in several ways: It commissions an entire body of work by many composers, rather than just one or two pieces which are performed once publicly and then promptly forgotten. This season three different San Francisco-area symphonies will perform nine newly-commissioned orchestral works by these noted composers: Ingram Marshal, Osvaldo Golijov, Kenji Bunch, Roberto Sierra, Kevin Puts, Pierre Jalbert, Peteris Vasks, David Carlson and Behzad Ranjbaran. The orchestras are the Marin Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony and Oakland East Bay Symphony.