Telarc International Corporation is an
independent record labelAn independent record label is a record label operating without the funding of or outside the organizations of the major record labels.-Overview:...
, based in
Cleveland, OhioCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately 60 miles west of the Pennsylvania border...
,
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and founded in
1977-Events:Bohemian Rhapsody is named 'The Best Single Of The Last 25 Years' by BPI.In this year, the St. Magnus Festival was founded in Orkney by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies....
by two classically trained musicians and former teachers,
Jack RennerJack L. Renner is an American classically-trained musician and recording engineer, best known as chairman, CEO and chief recording engineer of the Telarc International Corporation....
and Robert Woods. Originally a
classical musicClassical music is the mainstream music produced in, or rooted in the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 9th century to present times...
-only label, the label has had a long association with Ohio's two most famous orchestras: the
Cincinnati Symphony OrchestraAs the fifth-oldest orchestra in the United States, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has a legacy of fine music making as reflected in its performances in historic Music Hall, recordings, and international tours...
and the
Cleveland OrchestraThe Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall...
, as well as the
Atlanta Symphony OrchestraThe Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Robert Spano has been its music director since 2001....
and the
St. Louis Symphony OrchestraThe Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra based in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1880 by Joseph Otten as the St. Louis Choral Society, the SLSO is the second-oldest symphony orchestra in the United States as it is preceded by the New York Philharmonic.-History:The St...
. Telarc has since released music from other styles of music including
jazzJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
,
bluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created within the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and
country musicCountry music is a blend of popular musical forms originally found in the Southern United States and the Appalachian Mountains...
.
In 1996, Telarc merged with another independent label,
Heads UpHeads Up International is an independent jazz and contemporary instrumental label located in Cleveland, Ohio.Founded in 1990 by Dave Love, Heads Up International has gained international recognition for its contribution to the world of contemporary instrumental music...
, now a Telarc subsidiary.
In late 2005 both Telarc and Heads Up were bought by
Concord RecordsConcord Records is a U.S. record label now based in Beverly Hills, California. Originally known as Concord Jazz, it was established in 1972 as an off-shoot of the Concord Jazz Festival in Concord, California by festival founder Carl Jefferson, a local automobile dealer and jazz fan who sold his...
.
Telarc International Corporation is an
independent record labelAn independent record label is a record label operating without the funding of or outside the organizations of the major record labels.-Overview:...
, based in
Cleveland, OhioCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately 60 miles west of the Pennsylvania border...
,
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and founded in
1977-Events:Bohemian Rhapsody is named 'The Best Single Of The Last 25 Years' by BPI.In this year, the St. Magnus Festival was founded in Orkney by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies....
by two classically trained musicians and former teachers,
Jack RennerJack L. Renner is an American classically-trained musician and recording engineer, best known as chairman, CEO and chief recording engineer of the Telarc International Corporation....
and Robert Woods. Originally a
classical musicClassical music is the mainstream music produced in, or rooted in the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 9th century to present times...
-only label, the label has had a long association with Ohio's two most famous orchestras: the
Cincinnati Symphony OrchestraAs the fifth-oldest orchestra in the United States, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has a legacy of fine music making as reflected in its performances in historic Music Hall, recordings, and international tours...
and the
Cleveland OrchestraThe Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall...
, as well as the
Atlanta Symphony OrchestraThe Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Robert Spano has been its music director since 2001....
and the
St. Louis Symphony OrchestraThe Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra based in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1880 by Joseph Otten as the St. Louis Choral Society, the SLSO is the second-oldest symphony orchestra in the United States as it is preceded by the New York Philharmonic.-History:The St...
. Telarc has since released music from other styles of music including
jazzJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
,
bluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created within the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and
country musicCountry music is a blend of popular musical forms originally found in the Southern United States and the Appalachian Mountains...
.
In 1996, Telarc merged with another independent label,
Heads UpHeads Up International is an independent jazz and contemporary instrumental label located in Cleveland, Ohio.Founded in 1990 by Dave Love, Heads Up International has gained international recognition for its contribution to the world of contemporary instrumental music...
, now a Telarc subsidiary.
In late 2005 both Telarc and Heads Up were bought by
Concord RecordsConcord Records is a U.S. record label now based in Beverly Hills, California. Originally known as Concord Jazz, it was established in 1972 as an off-shoot of the Concord Jazz Festival in Concord, California by festival founder Carl Jefferson, a local automobile dealer and jazz fan who sold his...
. Today both labels operate as semi-
autonomousAutonomy is a concept found in moral, political, and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it refers to the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision...
units on the
Concord Music GroupConcord Music Group is a record company formed in 2004 by the merger of Concord Records and Fantasy Records. In 2005, the company acquired the classics and jazz label Telarc International. On December 18, 2006, Concord announced the re-launch of the soul label Stax; rights to the name were...
.
The Telarc Sound
Telarc was noticed for the high quality of its recordings, encapsulated in the slogan "The Telarc Sound". Its
engineerEngineers are concerned with developing economical and safe solutions to practical problems, by applying mathematics and scientific knowledge while considering technical constraints. The term is derived from the Latin root "ingenium," meaning "cleverness"...
s are highly regarded within the recording business, and have led Telarc to 40
Grammy AwardsThe Grammy Awards —or Grammys—are presented annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States for outstanding achievements in the music industry...
. In 2004 it received the "Label Of The Year" Award from Gramophone Magazine. Telarc was one of the first labels to begin recording music with a 20-bit
analog-to-digital converterAn analog-to-digital converter is a device which converts continuous signals to discrete digital numbers...
(ADC) in the late 1980s and started using 24-bit formats since 1996. Currently, the majority of Telarc's releases are (generally hybrid)
SACDsSuper Audio CD is a high-resolution, read-only optical audio disc format developed by Sony and Philips Electronics, the same companies that created the Compact Disc. SACD is designed to provide high-resolution audio in both stereo and surround sound modes...
based on
DSDDirect-Stream Digital is the trademark name used by Sony and Philips for their system of recreating audible signals which uses pulse-density modulation encoding, a technology to store audio signals on digital storage media which is used for the Super Audio CD .The signal is stored as delta-sigma...
recordings.
2009 Staff Reduction
In February 2009, due to corporate restructing at Concord Music Group, Telarc announced it would cut twenty-six jobs and that it would also stop producing its own recordings. These job cuts included the highly-regarded, multi-award winning production team. Telarc´s founder and former president Robert Woods resigned in March 2009 and was replaced by Heads Up president Dave Love. Love was subsequently let go the following month. Four key members of the Telarc production team - Grammy-award winning engineers Michael Bishop and Robert Friedrich, Grammy-award winning producer Thomas Moore, and chief technician Bill McKinney - formed the independent production company, Five/Four Productions, Ltd.