Our artists
The Metronome label was founded in 1992 by the producer Tim Smithies who had previously worked with Nimbus Records. The Orlando Consort had performed in events he had promoted as the Early Music Network director and they chose to release their first recording of medieval polyphony on the new label. The composers on this album were mostly unknown but it included Perotin’s Viderunt omnes, a work which is an early masterpiece of Western musical history. That set the tone for the label. The Orlando Consort followed this with a series of projects reflecting the frontier-like exploration of medieval repertoire that characterised the exploratory heyday of early music revival. For example their recordings of the music of the Plantaganet era composer John Dunstaple benefited from the researches of Dr. Margaret Bent and went on to receive the first Gramophone Award for the label. That accolade has been repeated a number of times. For example, Carole Cerasi’s early keyboard performances have also won and they explore a broad repertoire from Blasco de Nebra, Jacquet de la Guerre and Tomkins through Bach and his son C.P.E. Bach to Haydn, another jewel in this catalogue.
The pattern of working with musicians active in experimental and unusual repertoire or with new approaches to core repertoire was the key to the way that Metronome’s catalogue has developed. By exploring this site we hope you can look beyond those you are familiar with and find new musicians and music you have yet to hear.
The recording process is the mirror of the live performance. It is one that most musicians and producers find very rewarding not just to “provide a note of the musical footsteps they have left behind them as if through the snow” as Olivier Chassain has put it, but also, as an intense engagement by a small team to explore the music creatively for audiences all over the world.
In the past 25 years the label has worked with a fascinating array of composers, performers, graphic designers, visual artists, studio engineers, sound editors, musicologists, instrument makers, publishers, academics, picture researchers, programme makers, journalists and broadcasters, some of whom remain in the background unacknowledged but whose involvement to the production has nevertheless been an integral contribution to the creative impetus that producing an album involves and seeing those musical ideas come to be heard in the international arena.
The pattern of working with musicians active in experimental and unusual repertoire or with new approaches to core repertoire was the key to the way that Metronome’s catalogue has developed. By exploring this site we hope you can look beyond those you are familiar with and find new musicians and music you have yet to hear.
The recording process is the mirror of the live performance. It is one that most musicians and producers find very rewarding not just to “provide a note of the musical footsteps they have left behind them as if through the snow” as Olivier Chassain has put it, but also, as an intense engagement by a small team to explore the music creatively for audiences all over the world.
In the past 25 years the label has worked with a fascinating array of composers, performers, graphic designers, visual artists, studio engineers, sound editors, musicologists, instrument makers, publishers, academics, picture researchers, programme makers, journalists and broadcasters, some of whom remain in the background unacknowledged but whose involvement to the production has nevertheless been an integral contribution to the creative impetus that producing an album involves and seeing those musical ideas come to be heard in the international arena.