In the Dorian Mode

From the Recording Vault Dept.: Here’s a piece I wrote 35 years ago about a record company while it was in its infancy. A CD company, to be technically correct, but it’s hard to shake old jargon from your heels. I was so impressed with Dorian and its recordings that I convinced them to hire me to write some liner notes, many of which have been reproduced elsewhere on this blog (just search “Dorian” if you’re curious). Dorian had a 16-year run, ultimately succumbing to financial troubles that left them a million dollars in the hole. They declared bankruptcy, and their assets were sold to Virginia-based Sono Luminus, which now markets many of the CDs and has added new ones under the Dorian imprimatur, but without any sense of the wonderful graphic design that graced the original catalogue. I got in touch with them to see about some royalties for the liner notes of mine that they’re using, but they refused to return my calls. There. That’s off my chest!

                                                                                                

CRAIG DORY PLACES SIX COMPACT DISCS upon his desk with the care of a man dealing a high-stakes poker hand. “The artwork arrived today,” he says. “This is our first look at the finished product.” It’s the culmination of over two years of working and waiting, and Dory is as radiant as a new father.

On the other side of his desk sits partner Brian Levine, placing jackets into the jewel boxes of a dozen or so more copies of the discs. Both men are big, bearded fellows in flannels and jeans. They fit nobody’s image of the world’s newest, and possibly best, entrepreneurs of recorded classical music.

Nevertheless, that’s Dorian Recordings’ specialty. The operation is located at State and Second Streets in Troy for proximity to the acoustically marvelous Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, where most of the discs will be recorded. The offices are in a quiet building that mixes doctors and other professionals with long-time residents.

Dory and Levine like it that way. Both came from small towns – Dory in Iowa, Levine in the Toronto suburbs – and appreciate Troy’s small-town feel.

“I moved here from Newark,” says Dory. “Coming to Troy was like going back home in a way, because the people here are more Midwestern than the usual East Coast types. They don’t have that laser-beam focus on things. They’re much more thoughtful.”

He was an engineer at Bell Laboratories for six years. “When I quit, I wanted something different. Brian and I met at a concert I was recording in New Jersey and we found we had an incredible amount in common – ”

“ – that we could use to make this record company different from all the others.” Levine takes up the thought easily. But where Dory leans forward and stabs with a finger to make a point, Levine leans back in his chair and laces his fingers across his stomach. “We thought the market lacked classical recordings that are made with the kind of care we can bring to it. Audiophile labels only seem to want to provide you with periodic explosions on your sound system. As long as they can convince someone that the disc sounds good, they don’t care about the performance.”

Dory amplifies the thought: “The regular labels have the artists but a variable sound quality. They tend to follow the trends in repertory, which underestimates the desires of the consumer.”

The St. Petersburg Quartet
recording in the Troy Music Hall
Photo by B. A. Nilsson, 5 June 2001

Levine: “We think the consumer is a lot smarter than that, and, while we can’t compete with the Berlin Philharmonic doing Beethoven’s Fifth, we know we’ve got a good-quality alternative. Which is not to say we won’t do a Beethoven’s Fifth when we can afford it and find an artist who has something unique to say about the work.”

The first half-dozen releases run a gamut of artists and stylings. The English Lute Song features soprano Julianne Baird and lutenist Ronn McFarlane in settings of Renaissance songs; Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons is a neglected set of miniatures played by pianist Antonin Kubalek. Both were taped across the street.

Harpsichordist Colin Tilney is probably the best-known artist in the Dorian stable, and performs a set of sonatas by Scarlatti on the third disc. Fourth and fifth feature organist Jean Guillou in his own transcription of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and a set of organ encores featuring showstoppers by Bach, Haydn, Handel, Purcell, and others.

The irony of Solid Brass at the Opera is that it wasn’t recorded at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall because of scheduling difficulties, but it was a Troy performance by Solid Brass that first brought Dory to this town and into the hall he now adores.

He ran smack into the hall’s insurance imbroglio of a season ago, “but we were the first people into the hall after all that was resolved.” he says. “And everyone connected with hall – and with the city – have been as cooperative as they could be.”

The new CDs should be in local stores by press time, giving area shoppers an advantage of a week or two over the rest of the country. Levine, who serves as executive producer for the label, is confident that the combination of attractive appearance and superior sound will persuade consumers to buy the product – and quickly return to buy more.

“It took a long time to get the product out because we were developing a look for the product that would say as much as we could about ourselves,” he says. “It had to be something consistent, but something that could accommodate variety. We work with Chrisner and Christensen Graphics in Vermont, the same people who did all the designs for Bruegger’s Bagels.

“When the customers first see it, they’ll notice a distinctive, family look to the covers. They’re eye-catching and tasteful. They say that someone cared about what was being done here.”

It’s been a busy week for them. Their European agents left yesterday after a series of meetings to develop marketing plans. And work on the January releases needs to be finished. But there’s still time for a preview.

Turn right past the front desk and you’re in the Dorian mixing studio. It’s a small, white room that looks through two large windows onto State Street. A pair of very new-looking loudspeakers flank the windows. Before the opposite wall stands a rack of machinery that includes a pair of digital audio tape decks and a slew of sophisticated equalization and editing equipment.

Dory chooses a tiny cassette from a central table on which is also a mixing board. “Here’s one of our next releases,” he says. There’s something gleefully Dr. Frankenstein-ish about him as he pops the tape into a deck and throws a bunch of switches.

The organ note that emerges sounds like it’s coming from – well, from an actual organ. A clear, distortion-free sequence that assumes the familiar melody of Pictures at an Exhibition.

“It’s Guillou’s own arrangement,” explains Levine. “It’s also the debut recording of the new Steinmeyer-Kleuker organ at the Zurich Tonhalle, which Guillou designed.”

A fortissimo passage obliterates his speech for a moment. The notes shimmer marvelously, as they do in the samples of voice, solo piano and brass ensemble that we audition next.

Says Dory: “We’ve taken a belt-and-suspenders approach to the project, making every digital bit sound the best we can. We’ve done a lot of development to ensure that our bits are better – our bits are best.”

– Metroland Magazine, 1 December 1988