Leaf Music Signs with Naxos of America

 

To use an instrumental allegory, the business of Halifax-based classical label Leaf Music is about to expand from trio-sized to a chamber orchestra.

Earlier in September, the publisher of recordings by pianist Julien LeBlanc, Trio Arkaede, and the Saint John String Quartet entered a new worldwide partnership with one of the leading sources for classical music, Naxos of America, Inc.

Besides becoming Leaf’s exclusive distributor for physical compact discs, it will also spread their Atlantic Canadian classical recordings digitally via high resolution downloads and major streaming services.

But Leaf Music founder Jeremy VanSlyke didn’t even get to take the call from Nashville-based Naxos CEO Jeff Van Driel earlier this summer, he was on vacation in the wilds of Yellowstone National Park.

But the Fredericton native was able to celebrate soon enough when he got home, and enjoy the fact that the boutique label he’d been carefully curating over the past few years was just the kind of company with which Naxos likes to be on board.

“It depends on what the label’s catalogue looks like,” says the musician and producer over a coffee at Lion & Bright, next door to his Agricola Street office. “We’ve built up about twelve titles at this point, with three more coming over the next year, but this is the result of a long process. I first started contacting them two years ago, and didn’t hear anything at first.

“Maybe a year-and-a-half ago, I heard from someone in Toronto, asking for some CDs and any write-ups or reviews we could send along, and even then we didn’t hear back right away. But it’s like anybody who’s tried to make a record on his or her own or get a book published, and now we’re within this democratized digital media universe where anyone can publish a book or release a recording. But there still isn’t that real opportunity for a return on your investment unless you have someone with the scale of a big player involved.”

And Naxos is a big player indeed, born in the early days of the compact disc, licensing older analog recordings and working with orchestras and performers in far-flung corners of the globe, offering high quality, budget-priced releases to listeners eager to replace their old 12″ vinyl LPs with the shiny new 5″ CDs.

“They figured out that rather than paying the New York Philharmonic to record something, they could get the Slovenia Radio Orchestra to record the same Beethoven symphony, and people would still buy it,” explains VanSlyke. “Especially if it was only $5.99, instead of $25.99.”

Once Naxos got a firm footing in the world of recorded classical music, the company took on another role as a distributor of other classical labels, which benefitted from the infrastructure that they’d already established.

This extends to the online realm, with hi-def. digital downloads available at its music store ArkivMusic.com, which handles everything from their own line of recordings to Sony Classical and Deutsche Grammophon, and ClassicsOnlineHD.com.

“That’s one of the big things about teaming up with Naxos,” says VanSlyke, “in addition to having access to Apple Music and Spotify and, most importantly, their curated playlists, which brings back the old fashioned radio plugger saying, ‘Play this! Or play this!’

“You’ve got almost the same thing, and you hope to have a good return on your investment with digital music, and the main way to get the word out is through these curated playlists. If you can get on Apple’s Rainy Day playlist, or their cooking playlist, that’s $500 instead of $5, and that’s something they’ll be able to help with.”

But as VanSlyke notes, most people don’t seek a career in classical music to make a pile of cash, and his prime motivation for starting Leaf Music in 2012 was to have a greater opportunity to share what classical musicians are doing in this region with the rest of the world.

He’s used to doing so much of the work himself, with the help of media relations assistant Claire Geldart and graphic artist/production designer Michelle Beaudin, which is why it’s such a refreshing change to be dealing with a company where there’s one manager solely in charge of licensing recordings for films, television and advertising; or another who takes care of royalties for composers and performers.

“When all this landed, I went to Nashville for this giant round of introductions, with twelve people that are on your team,” he recalls. “It’s pretty intense, when you think about it. In classical music on the East Coast, we don’t really operate on that kind of scale, at all. I guess there’s nearly a dozen people in the office at Symphony Nova Scotia, but outside of that it’s mostly one to three-person shops.

“There are a lot of talented people working in this sector, but not with that kind of depth or scale. I might get a phone call with a question about licensing or distributing, and I’ve got to keep those balls in the air because I’m at a recording session, and it can take a few days to deal with some things. That can all happen a lot faster, and I can focus on making the recordings.”

VanSlyke’s recent recordings include a Halifax Camerata Singers session done in Amherst’s Trinity-St. Stephen’s United Church (A Time for All Things, nominated for Best Classical Recording this year by Music Nova Scotia), and an upcoming project with soprano Maureen Batt and baritone (and Boardroom Cafe proprietor) J.P. Decosse, with pianist Simon Docking. The latter release will feature Schubert’s Opus 52 and a song cycle by Halifax composer/instructor Fiona Ryan inspired by the Schubert piece and Sir Walter Scott’s poem The Lady of the Lake, at St. Mary’s Church in Indian River, PEI.

“You have to be innovative to avoid being totally cookie-cutter,” says VanSlyke. “The trick is, you have to have a hook. With Maureen, we’re doing Ave Maria (as part of the Schubert piece), but maybe someone will search for Ave Maria on iTunes and come across this whole other album of unique music.

“It’s nice to be working with a woman composer too, because I think they’re underrepresented in Canada, and underexposed. It’s another opportunity for us to feature artists from here as well as composers, it’s pretty important. You’re taking something from the cultural fabric of the Maritimes and preserving it. It’s not a super weighty thing, but you have to take it seriously, we have this responsibility to go through all the music that’s going on, and pick out parts of it that are important, and get it out there.”

-Halifax writer Stephen Cooke studied at University of King’s College. He is The Chronicle Herald’s Arts Reporter and currently writes for Local Xpress.