Reviewed By Allen Huotari

When undertaking a strategy aimed at the abolition of a boundary (whether said boundary is real or imaginary), it is often more effective to begin the task by simply, calmly, and thoughtfully asking "why does the boundary exist?" as opposed to an all out assault on the perceived barrier. In this fashion, the boundary can often be viewed as irrelevant, meaningless, or possibly mythical. The logical process of abolition can then ignore the boundary, go around the boundary, or pretend the boundary never actually existed. Each approach may be far more practical and productive than the physical act of tearing the boundary down.

Over it's nearly 20 year existence, GM Recordings has not only consistently challenged the notion that musical boundaries exist, but has gone as far as making these superfluous by operating, in theory, on all sides of any supposedly established boundary.

GM Recordings can easily be considered as one of the prototypical independent (or "indie") labels. Founded by Gunther Schuller, (whose distinguished work as a composer, arranger, producer, author, conductor and educator has earned him renown in both jazz and classical realms including Down Beat magazine's Hall of Fame / Lifetime Achievement Award), the label does not merely provide a vehicle by which vital and innovative jazz or classical musicians can present their work, but also fosters an environment that stimulates and encourages the test and transcendence of artistic perimeters.

An informal examination of the musicians who have appeared on GM Recordings quickly reveals that the label has an ear for both budding and established creative talent. Jazz musicians of note who have released recordings as leaders for GM include: Ran Blake, Paul Motian, Fred Hersch, Mark Whitecage and Mark Helias. Of course, the critically acclaimed large ensemble Orange Then Blue (with 6 releases to date) has at one time or another included Dave Douglas, Chris Speed, Andrew D'Angelo, Andy Laster, Cuong Vu, Tom Varner, Matt Darriau, and Jamie Saft performing not only their own compositions but those of Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Gil Evans, Charlie Parker, Albert Ayler, Tim Berne, and Gunther Schuller.

Although having released less than 50 jazz recordings and nearly 70 classical ones, the quality of GM Recordings has been recognized (unsurprisingly) through honors from the recording industry. Since 1993, GM Recordings has produced four finalists and one winner at the NAIRD (National Association of Independent Record Distributors) and now AFIM (Association For Independent Music) 'Indie' Awards.

In summary, GM Recordings consistently lives up to the immense heritage of its founder by continuing to seek out and work with courageous musicians who refuse to acknowledge confinement and also by repeatedly offering exciting, speculative, and intriguing recordings to today's listeners.

The latest release from GM Recordings is the long anticipated final set from the Gerry Hemingway Quintet entitled Waltzes, Two-Steps, and Other Matters of the Heart and was compiled from the band's 1996 tour. The cd features the "destined to be considered classic" lineup of: Gerry Hemingway - drums, percussion; Mark Dresser - bass; Michael Moore - saxophones and clarinet; Ernst Reijseger - cello; and Wolter Wierbos - trombone. This is Mr. Hemingway's second recorded appearance on GM recordings, the first being THIRTEEN WAYS with Fred Hersch (piano) and Michael Moore (saxophone and clarinet).

All About Jazz is pleased to present the following interview with Marc Lambert, General Manager of GM Recordings as part of this mini-spotlight. This interview was conducted via e-mail in October 1999.

ALL ABOUT JAZZ: Please give us a brief history of GM Recordings and explain the label’s aesthetic policies and procedures (i.e., what or who defines the criteria that determines what is or isn’t released).

MARC LAMBERT: GM will celebrate its 20th year in at the turn of the century. Mr. Schuller founded GM a few years after he started Margun/Gunmar Music Publishing during his tenure as President of the New England Conservatory. He conceived the mission of both companies as contributing to American music through the support of challenging material that wasn’t otherwise available. His commitment to diverse and unusual classical and jazz music is really inspiring, especially when you consider that he is 74 and has to spend an enormous amount of time and energy working to support his companies. If in my lifetime I do a tiny fraction of what he manages to accomplish, I will die a happy man. As President and Executive Producer Mr. Schuller is very much involved in the aesthetic policies and procedures for the label. This is especially the case for classical recordings as Mr. Schuller pretty much determines the personnel and repertoire for those projects. For jazz, GM also accepts tape/CDR submissions and develops the project from editing onward.

I can’t honestly claim that there are clearly defined criteria by which we decide what will be released. In previous years, Mr. Schuller used to evaluate everything personally, but these days we are flooded by hundreds of submissions. While a number of them are not well targeted and immediately rejectable as inappropriate for GM, many are worth more careful consideration. I make the first few cuts and develop a prioritized list of projects I think Mr. Schuller should hear, with my notes as to why I think the project is worth considering. Fortunately, our tastes are similar since I also wish to see GM support more challenging projects and I am particularly interested in cutting-edge material that stretches the boundaries between genres, as between jazz and classical. Aesthetically GM generally does not release mainstream or traditional jazz and tends towards the more adventurous avant-garde blends. While Mr. Schuller and I both appreciate projects that blend compositional structure with improvisatory freedom, we can disagree about the relative proportions. I lean more outside than Gunther, but sometimes, as with our Mark Whitecage and Mark Helias projects, he can surprise me. Your question narrows the field to aesthetics, so I won’t go into the range of financial issues we need to consider other than to say that while my job is to minimize the economic irrationality of a project, one look at our catalog makes clear that GM does not release material according to financial considerations. Although we need to consider economics more carefully these days, GM still operates as something of a charitable institution and manages to release projects deemed artistically and historically significant, rather than purely profit-making. So the short answer to this question is that GM uses general, not specific, criteria and that most decisions are made on a case by case basis, by small committee with Mr. Schuller having final say.

AAJ: How and when did you personally come to be involved with GM Recordings?

ML: I was hired not quite two years ago. Mr. Schuller basically "discovered" me, saving me from a life in academia. I was working on a Ph.D. in Political Science (comparative law and China) at UMichigan-Ann Arbor, teaching comparative politics and U.S. constitutional law to scary pre-law types. I had been doing a lot of extra-curricular escapism over the years in the jazz scene as a music director and DJ at UM radio station, a quasi-presenter/promoter, and musician wannabe frustrated by classical music training. When yet another Ph.D. advisor decided to leave without warning to take a different position, I decided to take a leave of my own and seek my destiny elsewhere for a time. George Schuller and I had become friends as his band Orange Then Blue became area favorites, and after I served on a bizarre radio panel at the JazzTimes Convention, he suggested I apply for this job. While I lacked specific record label experience, I had been involved with this sort of music my entire life and have business experience as a restauranteur/entrepreneur, so after Gunther and I clicked during the various interviews for the position, we both decided to take the leap of faith. Since then it's been such an experience that I can't imagine leaving the "real world" and returning to the "hallowed halls".

AAJ: What is a typical work day for you like?

ML: What's that?! There is just too much happening for any one day being considered typical. It's generally a frantic enterprise trying to service a 100 title catalog and its artists, maintain a company of this sort, seek ways to expand into new areas, support recent releases, and manage the recording and production schedules. I spend a lot of time on the phone and handle a lot of correspondence, preferably over email. Current projects are working on upcoming recordings by Russell Sherman, Ran Blake and Frank Carlberg, hiring another employee, investigating affordable e-commerce solutions, negotiating a few contracts, and seeking international distribution. There is also a great deal of busy work associated with maintaining the basic functioning of this company from corporate taxes to computer problems. My new wife and I moved to Worcester, so now I have the commute for listening to submissions and “unwinding” (ever drive in Boston?).

AAJ: What is your favorite story about life at GM Recordings? What is the most satisfying or rewarding part of your job?

ML: One of my favorite stories revolves around our new Gerry Hemingway release. When I was visiting my wife’s family in Italy last year, my one requirement was that we see Gerry’s European quintet at the Clusone Festival. After a fabulous set, Gerry announced that he had been saving his favorite live tapes from the group, in case there were any label folk in the audience. I owed Gerry $15 for a CD he gave me at a gig back in the States, so it was a gas to work my way through the CD-buying mob that surrounded him at the end of the show, surprise him with U.S. dollars, and give him my business card saying call me about those tapes. This quintet disbanded soon after that tour so our recording is now an historic one and it was the first release I brought to the label – no surprise it’s also my favorite GM title.

I like being a part of the sound engineering and editing processes and especially enjoy working on the packaging with the graphic designers. So one of the most satisfying things for me is looking back at the personal marks I’ve made with the company over the last two years. I’m proud of having developed a more youthful, slightly funky look for GM releases and I’ve modernized and rationalized operations here in order to ensure that GM continues to produce uncompromising and challenging music despite the growing economic obstacles. There’s still an incredible amount of work to be done since the company has been operating according to some fairly outdated methods, but we’ve got a new staff onboard and a boss who is open to new ideas, so hopefully the jury that’s still out will come back happy.

AAJ: If possible, could you briefly describe the process that a recording might go through from being a “release candidate” to a “finished product”?

ML: The situation can be very different for jazz and classical projects. Classical recordings are solicited by Mr. Schuller who attends the sessions as a hands-on producer and he personally works with the editing engineer in our editing suite to develop the master tapes. So, these projects particularly benefit a great deal from the personal attention of Mr. Schuller’s “Pulitzer ears”, as we call them. It’s quite remarkable seeing him work on these phases of production as the man has a computer for a musical mind. The jazz releases are sometimes recorded by us and are often taken from the raw tapes onward. As “release candidates” they go through the committee process mentioned in answer to question #1 above. We then edit and master the tapes trying to address any sonic and programmatic concerns of the label within the boundaries acceptable to the musicians. Our primary mission is not making money but helping develop the careers of the musicians in particular and contributing to ‘the music’ in general, so ultimately it needs to be a recording of which the artist is proud. There are of course a lot of things that need to be done before we have “finished product” in-house, from negotiating contracts and acquiring necessary clearances or licenses to organizing recording sessions and coordinating a host of sub-contractors with tight schedules. We spend 3 months or so working with designers, liner-note writers, photographers, and musicians on the various elements for the booklet and packaging. The printing-replicating-packaging chain is often full of risk and sometimes outright disasters, but I doubt your question is looking for such details. Whoever says that making a CD is fairy inexpensive isn’t thinking about the costs associated with all these various stages of production. That a CD might cost a few bucks to package is totally misleading since small labels don’t have their own pressing plants and need to think of project costs in more holistic terms. I cringe whenever I hear someone say that

AAJ: If you could change one aspect of the recording industry at large, what would it be?

ML:The over-whelming impact of big business on the industry. Too much operates according to the short-term principals generated by the desire to make money quickly and find that big hit. Large labels playing the high-stakes game of spending millions on the mass saturation of a handful of releases in the hopes that one will make a massive profit create a lot of problems for smaller scale labels and artists. There’s a domino effect that can do anything from making a CD manufacturer bury lower volume orders to ensuring distributors and retailers ignore releases by artists without a large sales history. The effect is even felt when small labels try to negotiate fair but workable contracts with musicians who have learned the hard way to treat all labels as untrustworthy majors that seek to make money at their expense. Running a label that produces music which is not extremely popular and hence highly profitable means we struggle enormously to make ends meet. While this makes us hope something we release sells really well, we don’t sacrifice our integrity or our focus on the quality of the art form in order to follow market predictions in determining what to release. Mr. Schuller’s principles in that regard are one of the main reasons why I accepted this job.

AAJ: Do you think that digital recording technology has made it easier for independent recording labels to be founded and to continue to operate? Why or why not?

ML: I love the idea that the easier production and wider availability of recordings may undermine the power and influence of big business. And though I think this development is generally a positive one in the short term, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say some things I haven’t heard discussed yet in the hopes it inspires some discussion on the topic. While I do think it’s now easier for labels to be founded, I don’t think the new technologies necessarily make it easier for companies to continue to operate. I depends to a large degree on how you define “recording label” – not to speak of what one means by “independent.” If a label is a company that produces more than a few releases a year, then there are operating expenses associated with maintaining that company which are not beneficially impacted by digital technology. Is a label a couple of people who put out an occasional cd of their own, or is it a company with the capacity to effectively maintain an ongoing relationship with those to which it is connected? I’m concerned that it’s become too easy to start something in the short-term, yet it’s also become increasingly difficult to last in this hit-driven industry in the long-term. What’s more valuable to the health of Music and Culture, a fragmented free for all where labels come and go in an extremely fluid and unstable environment and where incredibly intense low-level competition provides a stable diet from which large companies feed? Or, is it more valuable to provide ongoing support to musicians and some stability for the people who work in connection to the music?

The number of releases coming out has grown totally out of proportion to the number of releases and labels supportable economically, and the pendulum will swing back before too long. The going completely digital with electronic transfer replacing finished goods, may stall that backlash for a time, but it won’t prevent it entirely. The music industry was very hard hit a few years ago and alot of people lost jobs and labels, so I lament the possibility that very little seems to have been learned. I believe the long-term survival of independent labels will depend to some extent on operating according to more cooperative principals where a few small labels come together in order to effectively create medium-sized companies or collectives that can take advantage of certain economies of scale. To some extent this happens when a website is shared by a number of labels or a group of small labels cooperate in order to get volume pricing from printing and pressing plants.

AAJ: Do you feel that the continued growth of the Internet is making it easier for independent recording labels to be founded and to continue to operate? Why or why not?

ML: The growth of the Internet at this point seems to help indies to some extent get around the territories dominated by major labels, but that often doesn’t mean they are able to more easily continue operations. As with the previous question, I think the short-term ease of founding a label masks the long-term problem of keeping it afloat as the number of competitors grows out of control and the increased competition leads to a backlash. I guess it’s an obvious textbook example of economic expansion and contraction cycles, but I worry that the overall result is a potentially unhealthy one. On the other hand, I do agree that companies which manage to survive such cycles are potentially strengthened and more healthy. The problem is that such long-term survival is often dependent on operating more like a major label, and becoming less of an independent one. For example, how many times have you been to a convention where an “indie” label exec is telling the audience how crucial it was to their label that they found some big hit? And how different is that label from “the majors”, to which they are compared in order to be defined as “independent”, yet with which they compete according to the same principals? Other than the difference of a few million dollars, what in the world do these terms end up meaning? I think it’s generally the SMALL labels that contribute the most to a lasting musical culture and that’s precisely because they’ve managed to avoid thinking and operating like major labels.

On-line sales may allow us to circumvent traditional distribution channels which are thoroughly dominated, but there are so many websites that there are few if any labels actually making any money. Instead, the stiff competition among the 35-40,000 CDs released has been translated to the competition among websites. Of course, my pessimism doesn’t mean I won’t get e-commerce for GM’s website. As a manager in the modern age, I feel I have no choice at this point but to gamble that maybe this method of spreading the word is less expensive than off-line advertising/publicity, and that maybe it will help us reach more customers directly. But, I am forced to find the least expensive means for adding e-commerce, and I have no illusions that this essentially passive medium will work on its own without actively publicizing the web address.

AAJ: What have been the best and worst aspects of the Internet for GM Recordings? Please elaborate.

ML: It is pretty expensive. It is labor-intensive. It can amount to very little without additional expenditures publicizing the website itself to attract visitors. The technologies associated with it develop quicker than we are capable of taking advantage of, but at the same time, they can help us develop means independent of expensive, traditional avenues for potentially reaching an audience, and possibly a younger audience than we’ve had in the past. GM is basically at the very beginning of exploring ways of using the website, but I am excited about the potential of at least spread our music more readily and farther geographically. Email has been enormously helpful and has been one important area of decreased costs and increased efficiency. I probably spend too much time handling correspondence I might have not answered because people have more access to me, but it works both ways so I’ve been able to get a lot done that would have been much more complicated. Being able to send large files and graphics has been a huge plus despite the computer or transfer problems.

AAJ: How do you anticipate that the availability of economical high speed Internet access is going to change the music industry? Is it evolution or revolution? Or merely big business hype?

ML: There is plenty of hype surrounding this, but if costs and access were available to me sooner, I probably would have taken the plunge for GM. Being free of finicky phone lines would be a huge benefit given our susceptible connections and improved speeds would be great, but the jury is out whether this is worth the investment yet. There is a revolutionary potential for the wider music industry regarding geographically dispersed real-time connectivity, but the indie label value of such high-techery seems to me tiny. The early benefits seem more evolutionary to me -- in the area of transferring music files for later use in editing and collaboration. Being able to transfer complete graphics and music packages would be nice though I fear this making possible the email invasion of massive files, like from those anonymously sending submissions!

AAJ: What do you think are the greatest artistic and business challenges (problems and/or opportunities) for GM Recordings as it heads into the year 2000 and beyond?

ML: Business: finding new markets for our diverse catalog, acquiring international distribution, continuing to retool our office operations, and keeping up with the rapid pace of technological change.

Artistic: continuing our mission of supporting challenging music and unique musicians, retaining our integrity despite increasingly trying economic challenges, and keeping up with artists who inspire us to think differently.

AAJ: What upcoming projects from GM Recordings should AAJ readers be aware of?

ML: We just released some great titles by Gerry Hemingway and Mary LaRose. The year 2000 is a big one for us as we will be celebrating our 20th anniversary, so we are planning some major efforts. Look for the launch of a new line of historical recordings for serious jazz aficionados. We are planning to release projects by some of the best musicians you may have not heard about, like downtown New Yorkers Frank Carlberg and Andy Biskin, and projects including more familiar folk like Ran Blake, Chris Speed, Ed Schuller, and Mark Feldman. Ran’s recording could be considered historic since it will be in a rare piano trio setting. I’d also like fellow jazzers to consider exploring the classical side of our 110 title catalog. GM has a very diverse array of both jazz and classical releases from standard repertoire like Beethoven, Bach and Mozart to modern 20th century works by Stravinsky, Milton Babbitt, and Iceland’s leading composer, Leifur Thorarinsson. Upcoming classical projects I hope AAJ readers will appreciate include the completion of Russell Sherman’s Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas and a celebration of Mr. Schuller’s 75th Birthday. There’s alot to explore on our website and anyone who mentions this interview can order CDs at a discounted rate of $12. It may be hard to coordinate such a wide spread of styles, but that also makes it an exciting label to work for!

AAJ: Wow…thanks Marc for your time and generosity !

GM Recordings reviewed in ALL ABOUT JAZZ –

Gerry Hemingway Quintet Waltzes, Two-Steps, and Other Matters of the Heart November 1999 (reviewed by Glenn Astarita)

Orange Then Blue While You Were Out May 1999 (reviewed by Glenn Astarita)

Lisa Thorson Resonance May 1999 (reviewed by Jim Santella)

Orange Then Blue Hold the Elevator- Live In Europe April 1999 (reviewed by Glenn Astarita)

Mark Whitecage Split Personality September 1998 (reviewed by Glenn Astarita)

Mark Helias Fictionary September 1998 (reviewed by Jim Santella)

Mark Helias Fictionary August 1998 (reviewed by Glenn Astarita)

for more information: http://www.gmrecordings.com/