Oregon Music News

Photo by Chris Leck

One of Portland’s most established record labels is North Pacific Music, which has been in business since 1991. North Pacific Music is a small, independent label owned and operated by composer and recording engineer Jack Gabel. Gabel is the resident composer of the Agnieszka Laska Dancers, and he serves on the board of Cascadia Composers, which is a non-profit organization for many composer who live in the Pacific Northwest.

I talked with Gabel on Friday to learn more about North Pacific Music.

How did North Pacific Music begin?

Gabel: I founded North Pacific Music as a way to release recordings of my works. That was the initial impetus, and we have since 1991 included music from other composers. So we are now up to 35 releases.  Every title in our catalog is also listed at Amazon.com and almost every one is available at ArkivMusic.

Back in 1991, I had just moved back to Portland from Japan where I had been living for four years. I had a recording in hand and had planned to release it, but I didn’t have the idea of making a record label. It seemed that a record label would help to protect the recording because I was going to send it out for broadcast. So our first release was Shakuhachi Banquet, and I shopped it around, and got it released on another label, but after it went out of print, I reissued it under North Pacific Music and it’s been in print ever since. The music on that CD is of composers I met in Japan, traditional Japanese pieces, plus one of my pieces “Etude for the Rainy Season.”

That recording features shakuhachi specialist Teruhisa Fukuda, who has gotten quite a following, especially in Europe. North Pacific Music also distributes a couple of other recordings by Fukuda which were released in Japan. This is music for the shakuhachi instrument with string quartet, and they are exciting pieces.

So North Pacific Music is partly a distribution service?

Gabel: That’s right. North Pacific Music is a distribution option for independent producers. Most of these producers are from the Northwest, but some are from other areas. For example, we provide U.S. distribution for “Joy as a Teardrop” by the Bulgarian artist Valeri Dimchev, who plays a traditional lute-like instrument called the tamboura.

Another recording that we distribute is the Cantores in Ecclesia “In Rome” CD that is from their award-winning trip in 1997 to the International Palestrina Competition. It went out of print a few years ago, but there has always been a lot of interest in it from people who have sent email and phone calls. So we reissued it as a release on the North Pacific Music label. It’s the exact same recording. We also distribute Cantores in Ecclesia’s recording of the Faure Requiem with the Portland Youth Philharmonic and Richard Zeller.

We also distribute Gayle and Phil Newman’s De Organographia recordings, which they originally released on their Pandourion Records label. De Organographia has several titles that we distribute, including “Music of the Ancient Greeks” and “Music of the Ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, and Greeks” which are our two best-selling titles. There is so much demand by musicologists and people interested in ancient music, that the Newmans often get invited to perform at conferences and museums like the Getty Museum in LA and the Smithsonian.

What is the focus of North Pacific Music?

Gabel: Our main focus is new contemporary art music. Most of it is self-produced. Most record labels will not bring out contemporary art titles unless it is a big name. Our most recent release is “Late Autumn Moods and Images” by David Bernstein. This recording features top-shelf local musicians like David Buck, Nancy Ives, Joël Belgique, Inés Voglar, and Hamilton Cheifetz. I did the recording, editing, and mastering of this release.

Recording services are another aspect of North Pacific Music. I’m a recording engineering, and I enjoy doing it. I did the recording, editing, and mastering of “Spring Quartet and selected works for strings,” which features my music played by the Fear No Music ensemble.

I also did the layout for several recordings, like the one for “Late Autumn Moods and Images.” The artists author initial drafts of liner notes, and generally choose what they want to see on the cover of the CD plus the photos they want to have in the packaging. I give guidance, do the layout, and we collaborate on editing. The Silvered Lute, for example, which soprano Mei Zhong brought as a complete mastered recording that was done in Indiana at Ball State University, and I helped her with the cover and the booklet inside. It was a huge project because the booklet is 24 pages, and barely fits in the jewel case. It has some Chinese lyrics with the English translation plus a bio. and photo of each artist in the recording.

We also released many of the recordings of Thomas Svoboda. Five of these recordings are in a 5-CD set. I’ve recorded, edited, and master several of those. Some were recorded in the Czech Republic.

Where do you do these recordings?

Gabel: I only have a digital studio for editing and mastering, but I prefer recording classical musicians in performance venues. I always recommend that classical musicians do their recording in a live hall. It’s the context that they are used to performing in. While they play, they listen and react to each other like in a regular concert. Then I make pure stereo recordings with omni-directional microphones and high-end pre-amps and converters. So the recording sessions are pure stereo with no mixing at all. The omni-directional microphones give us the full-reverb of the hall.

To counter potential background noise from cars, busses, airplanes, lawnmowers, and Harleys, I try to place the microphones close to the players – closer than I would in an insulated space – within four feet rather than around 12 feet. In the remastering, I can add a little hall ambience if needed. Classical musicians in a studio with headsets usually doesn’t work for chamber music pieces.

How about licensing?

Gabel: Yes, licensing is time-consuming, business that most musicians don’t care for. For example, the “Ferdinand the Bull and Friends” recording, which features David Ogden Stiers, required a lot of licensing. The first sessions for this recording were done almost ten years ago. Pick-up sessions were done along the way, including the most recent one last fall.

We had to have licensing contracts with Penguin, which owns the Ferdinand the Bull property. We had contracts with Curtis Brown, who own Ogden Nash properties. We had contracts with the French publisher Durand, which own Ravel properties. The last track has “Sheep May Safely Graze” by Bach in an arrangement for cello and piano that is owned by Oxford University Press. So to get all of the licensing in place for this recording was a job in itself. You can really get into trouble if you don’t do the licensing correctly.

I’ve release three recordings with my music – two of them features my electro-acoustical pieces. I’ve also got some of my pieces on other recordings like Tessa Brinckman and the East West Continuo’s “Glass Sky. ”

So, we have a catalog of 35 recordings, and we continue to grow. I really enjoy the business.

Ryan Heller, conductor

The Portland Vocal Consort, a 22-voice ensemble of professional singers, will sing works by Northwest composers this Friday (March 12) in Portland and Saturday (March 13) in Longview, Washington. The program features works by Jack Gabel, Morten Lauridsen, Bryan Johanson, Timothy Stephens, Vijay Singh, Karen Thomas, Robert Kyr, Joan Szymko, Ethan Gans-Morse, and Tom Walworth. An exhibition of visual work by Robert Haotia who is from Ghana will also be on display.

I caught up with the Ryan Heller, the choir’s conductor, to briefly discuss some of the pieces that will be in the program.

Tell us about Gabel’s “Farewell to Wang Wei”

Heller: It was written in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. We did the premiere of it last June. The Jefferson Dancers have choreographed a new piece to go with this work. Since the text is so powerful, I thought it would be neat to include a visual element. So they will be collaborating with us in this performance on Friday.

And Morten Lauridsen grew up in Beaverton.

Heller: Yes, we are doing the “id-Winter Songs.” They are incredibly challenging vocally in terms of intonation, polyphony, and texture. Fortunately, we have professional singers who can handled this music. There’s also a wicked piano part and our fabulous pianist, Janet Coleman, will play.

What else in on the program?

Heller: We’ll do Bryan Johanson’s “Psallite.” He uses the text of Psalm 100, the Jubilate Deo. It breaks out into 8 parts and has a great piano part as well. We will also do a piece by Timothy Stephens, who is a professor at Pacific University. I studied with him many years ago. His piece sets the famous poem “In Flanders Field,” that was written in reaction to the carnage of WWI.

We will also perform “Let Peace Abound” by Vijay Singh, who teaches at Central Washington. We also have Robert Kyr’s “In Praise of Music” and “Let There Be Music.” He calls these a two-part motet. One was written for and premiered by Chanticleer. So it was for men’s voices but it has the soprano ranges. It’s a luscious ode to the power of music, its meaning for life, and power to heal, energize, and inspire.

Who is Ethan Gans-Morse?

Heller: He is a University of Oregon student. He was the winner of our first young composer contest. It was for composers under 30 years old. We attracted around 25 pieces from 15 different composers. Ethan’s piece is called “Surrender,” and it’s scored for a men’s chorus. It’s a sumptuous love song. We’ll also sing four Lewis Carrol songs that Karen Thomas wrote. She conducts Seattle ProMusica. The songs are a lot of fun, and one of the is “Jabberwocky.”

It sounds like a great concert!

Heller: They singers are all just sensational and create a phenomenal sound. They sing their brains out! So, it will be a great concert!

LAMENTATIO is a new show by the Agnieszka Laska Dancers (ALD) and Danscoreo and Impetus Arts (IA). According to its creators , the show will be a “multi-media journey into the lyrical souls of the victims of the Global War Of Terror.”

November 18-19-20-21 @ 8pm – Sun. 22 @ 3pm, 2009
Imago Theatre space (17 SE 8th Ave., Portland)

Here is more information from the Press Release:

New choreography by ALD and IA Directors, Agnieszka Laska and Curtis Walker, to a new score by ALD Resident Composer, Jackie Gabel composed around excerpts from the Missa pro defunctis – Requiem of Roman Maciejewski, with projected montages by video artist, Takafumi Uehara. Poetry is from “POEMS FROM GUANTANAMO, THE DETAINEES SPEAK,” edited by Marc Falkoff, U. of Iowa Press, 2007 and “HERE, BULLET” by Brian Turner, A. James Books, 2005. Performance video footage will be edited/authored to DVD and submitted to international film festivals.

LAMENTATIO is a companion piece to THE FALL ‘01 – (premiered 09/11/06), a dance-theatre epic about the empire at the precipice of its fall. It focuses on the suicidal Global War Of Terror. LAMENTATIO examines the emotional and physical damage to victims on all sides. As for polemics, LAMENTATIO is a call for re-humanization of all victims. Any veteran and any refugee of any armed conflict from anywhere in the world will be freely admitted to any showing in this premiere run, as well as all persons of mixed abilities.