Klaus Heyman Appearing at J&R on 9/25

Klaus Heyman, the legendary Founder of NAXOS, will be signing autographs and answering questions from fans on Tuesday, September 25th at 12:30pm. He’ll be joined by violinist Phillipe Quint and Conductor JoAnn Falletta who will also be signing autographs.

Mr. Heyman was nice enough to answer a question for us here at J&R.

Congratulations, Klaus, on 20 successful years in a very tough business. Naxos seems to have reinvented ways of delivering quality classical music, and at a good price, to fans of the genre. Why did you decide to start a record label and what were you doing beforehand?

“At the very beginning, the idea behind the label was to sell classical CDs in Southeast Asia at the price of an LP — in 1987, when the label was launched, LP prices were very low in our region [five dollars at today's exchange rate] and CDs were very expensive [$20 at today's exchange rate]. As a result, CD sales were stagnant. At the time, Naxos was the only CD label selling its products at LP prices. Of course, today price is no longer the main selling point of the label — it’s the enormous breadth and depth of its catalog — something had not dreamt of when we started in 1987.

Before I started Naxos, my company, Pacific Music was the leading independent record company in Asia outside of Japan — we were the licensees for Southeast Asia of Virgin, Chrysalis, RCA, Motown, Jive, Mute and many other independent pop/rock labels and imported classical labels such as Teldec, Erato, Supraphon, Eurodisc and others. I was also in the consumer [Bose] and professional audio business — my company built the first modern recording studios in China [China Records, China Central Television, China Central Broadcasting].”

Make sure you come down for this once in a lifetime interaction with a classical legend. For directions for J&R, click here.

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