Telarc International Corporation is an independent record label

Independent record label

An independent record label is a record label operating without the funding of or outside the organizations of the major record labels. A great number of bands and musical acts begin on independent labels.-Overview:...

, based in Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, and founded in 1977

1977 in music

This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1977.-January–February:*January 1 – The Clash headline the gala opening of the London music club, The Roxy....

 by two classically trained musicians and former teachers, Jack Renner

Jack Renner (recording engineer)

Jack 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

Robert Woods (producer)

Robert Woods is a Grammy Award-winning classical music producer. Woods is a founder and former president of the independent record label Telarc International Corporation....

. Originally a classical music

Classical music

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

-only label, the label has had a long association with Ohio's two most famous orchestras: the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

As 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 Orchestra

Cleveland Orchestra

The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the five American orchestras informally 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 Orchestra

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

The 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 Orchestra

Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra

The 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 jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily 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 music

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

.
In 1996, Telarc merged with another independent label, Heads Up

Heads Up International

Heads 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 Records

Concord Records

Concord 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-autonomous

Autonomy

Autonomy is a concept found in moral, political and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision...

 units on the Concord Music Group

Concord Music Group

Concord Music Group is a record company owned by Village Roadshow 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;...

.

The Telarc Sound

Telarc is noted for the high quality of its recordings, encapsulated in the slogan "The Telarc Sound". Its engineer

Engineer

An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

s are highly regarded within the recording business, and have led Telarc to 40 Grammy Award

Grammy Award

A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

s. 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 converter

Analog-to-digital converter

An analog-to-digital converter is a device that converts a continuous quantity to a discrete time digital representation. An ADC may also provide an isolated measurement...

 (ADC) in the late 1980s and started using 24-bit formats since 1996. Currently, the majority of Telarc's releases are (generally hybrid) SACDs

Super Audio CD

Super Audio CD is a high-resolution, read-only optical disc for audio storage. Sony and Philips Electronics jointly developed the technology, and publicized it in 1999. It is designated as the Scarlet Book standard. Sony and Philips previously collaborated to define the Compact Disc standard...

 based on DSD

Direct Stream Digital

Direct-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 restructuring 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.