Websites for Professionals

Founded in 1978, Lovely Music is one of the longest-lived and most distinctive independent labels active in the recording and promotion of new American music. According to label founder Mimi Johnson, the label is “dedicated to releasing the best in avant-garde and experimental music, from electronics and computer music to new opera and extended vocal techniques.” Placing emphasis on the artist’s intent, Lovely Music recordings are always composer-supervised and produced.

The record label was founded by Johnson as an adjunct to the activities of Performing Artservices, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to the management and administration of American avant-garde artists working in the fields of music, dance and theater. When these artists were not able to get their music out to the record-buying public, Lovely was put forth as a solution. “Lovely Music represents many of the great innovators and interpreters of the last three decades, the men and women who have defined ‘American Music,’” says Johnson, “artists who nevertheless find it difficult or impossible to release their music through more conventional channels.”

Foremost among the artists represented in the Lovely catalog is composer Robert Ashley; almost all of Ashley’s most important works have been released by the label, including the monumental electronic opera for television, Perfect Lives (which has been called the “most influential music/theater/literary work of the 1980s”). Other composers have released some of their most important achievements on the label as well: David Behrman’s, “Leapday Night,” William Duckworth’s “Time Curve Preludes,” Jon Hassell’s “Vernal Equinox,” Alvin Lucier’s “I am sitting in a room” and “Music on a Long Thin Wire,” and Meredith Monk’s “Key” all rank among the more exceptional recordings to be found in the Lovely catalog. Performers and interpreters are also found in abundance on Lovely. Baritone Thomas Buckner, himself one of the most tireless promulgators of new music via recordings and live performance presentation, is represented by four collections of new music for voice by many of the greatest composers working in the avant-garde today. Pianist Joseph Kubera recorded John Cage’s extraordinary and seldom-performed “Music of Changes” for the label. And the new music vocal icon, Joan La Barbara, is represented by three recordings, most recently, “Voice is the Original Instrument,” a 2-CD retrospective of her work.

Through all of these recordings, Lovely Music has attained a position of respect among new music enthusiasts around the world, all as a result of Johnson’s unflagging devotion to helping the artist express her — or himself without compromise — a labor of love in the truest sense of the term.