Printer Friendly
The Free Library
4,547,712 articles and books
Member login
User name  
Password 
 
Join us Forgot password?

Barnes & Noble Announces Unprecedented Retailer-Artist Collaboration; Bookseller to Be Exclusive Retailer of J. Ralph's The Illusionary Movements of Geraldine and Nazu.


NEW YORK -- Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world's largest bookseller, today announced an unprecedented collaboration with Rumor Mill Records and electronica's wunderkind J. Ralph. The bookseller will be the exclusive retailer for J. Ralph's The Illusionary Movements of Geraldine and Nazu (on sale date of May 3rd). The CD will be featured in over 400 of its stores and on its Web site Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com).

Six years ago, J. Ralph was on the verge of becoming "The Next Big Thing in Pop Music." Just as his debut album broke, he veered in a new direction, submerging himself in an exploration of orchestral music. While those subsequent compositions found their way onto some of TV's most influential and popular ad campaigns, he has remained focused on his cinematic musical memoir, The Illusionary Movements of Geraldine and Nazu, which features a 79-piece orchestra and players from the Czech and New York Philharmonic Orchestras.

The promotion of J. Ralph follows in a long line of new and independent artists that Barnes & Noble has been instrumental in breaking out, ranging from initial support of superstars Norah Jones and Michael Buble, to debut and developing artists such as Rachel Fuller (Cigarettes & Housework) and Carla Bruni, often generating as much as 30 percent market share of all CDs sold.

"Artists & labels consider Barnes & Noble an essential component to the launching of new artists," said Chuck Gorman, vice president of music for Barnes & Noble, Inc.

"They know that our customer demographic is unique among all retail outlets. We've been particularly successful in promoting a wide range of 'adult artists' that are not given exposure in the mass merchandisers. Our most successful categories are contemporary vocalists, jazz, show tunes and artists of the signer/songwriter tradition."

The genesis of Geraldine and Nazu lies in its first track, "Untitled 17," the swan song of J. Ralph's Lava/Atlantic debut, Music to Mauzner By, which he released under the nom de plume SPY. Mauzner was a musical Rorschach Hermann 1884-1922.
Swiss psychiatrist. His inkblot test, introduced in 1921, has become a standard clinical diagnostic tool in psychiatry.
 test blending blue-eyed soul, 60's psychedelia, rock, hip-hop, funk, mariachi, drum & bass and numerous other styles. "Untitled 17" was a symphonic musical narrative featuring a 56-piece orchestra arranged and conducted by renowned film composer Carter Burwell (Joel and Ethan Coen, Spike Jonze). While recording "Untitled 17," J. Ralph discovered that the orchestra offered the purest medium for distilling his music warning, following simultaneous debuts on MTV and MTV2, J. Ralph disbanded his SPY project, walked away from the biggest new artist record deal in Lava/Atlantic history, and initiated a five-year self-imposed exile. He took refuge in an abandoned silent movie theater in lower Manhattan, where he constructed a sonic laboratory and carried out a full-scale excavation of what he calls "the orchestra's universal language." He created the music for Geraldine and Nazu relying solely on intuition and experimentation. He has no formal training and does not read or write a single note of music.

During this meditation he uncovered and developed a McLuhanian ideal, which, for him, obliterated and subverted the age-old distinction between art and commerce. This newfound perspective would paradoxically facilitate the making of Geraldine and Nazu. The advertising agency MVBMS found one of his orchestral songs, "M," and licensed it to personify their new Volvo campaign. A few months later, Volkswagen contacted J. Ralph after happening upon a demo of an unfinished orchestral prototype; the company commissioned Ralph to finish his piece ("One Million Miles Away") and premiered it in their "Wedding" spot during the 2001 Super Bowl. Due to unparalleled popularity among viewers, the commercial continued to run for a three years. "M" and "One Million Miles Away" are now both Geraldine and Nazu songs. The album's bonus track is a vocal version of "When She Dances," which is currently featured in a Honda commercial directed by Malcolm Venville.

J. Ralph and his highly successful production company The Rumor Mill have had hundreds of other scoring engagements in between, with as many as 27 spots broadcasting simultaneously. In the ubiquitous medium of television commercials, he has found an infinite canvas in which he exposes hundreds of millions of unsuspecting listeners to the spontaneous music he is devoted to making. He has been featured on the cover of Creativity magazine for re-imagining the way commercial music is created, licensed and perceived and is the first composer to earn two consecutive AICP AICP - Actual Irrigated Crop Production
AICP - American Institute of Certified Planners
AICP - Association Internationale de Pédiatrie Chiropratique (International Chiropractic Pediatric Association)
AICP - Association of Independent Commercial Producers
AICP - Association of Insurance Compliance Professionals
AICP - Association of Islamic Charitable Projects (Philadelphia, PA)
AICP - Aviation Inventory Control Point
 inductions into the MOMA's Permanent Archive of Film and Video. The Rumor Mill has won virtually every top honor--including AICP, Clio, One-Show, LIAA LIAA - Long Island Alarm Association (New York), Cannes International Advertising Festival awards, as well as an Emmy nomination for the Volkswagen commercial "Squares." The outfit regularly creates scores and sonic landscapes for commercials by esteemed filmmakers such as Errol Morris, Mark Morris, Mark 1956–, American dancer and choreographer, b. Seattle, Wash. After training in Balkan folk dance, flamenco, and ballet, he went on to dance for Eliot Feld, Laura Dean, and Lar Lubovitch. His own company, the Mark Morris Dance Group, debuted in New York in 1980; from 1988 to 1991 it was the resident company the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels. Romanek, Tony Kaye, Sam Bayer and Lance Accord, for companies including, Volkswagen, Sony Playstation, Microsoft, ESPN, Canon, and Lee Jeans. Geraldine and Nazu is the inaugural release on Rumor Mill Records, which J. Ralph formed in 2005 to develop his very spontaneous musical sketches into fully realized albums.

Rumor Mill Records will release the album to the marketplace on August 16, 2005.

ABOUT BARNES & NOBLE, INC.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world's largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 820 bookstores in 50 states. For the third year in a row, the company is the nation's top retail brand for quality, according to the EquiTrend(R) Brand Study by Harris Interactive(R). Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com), one of the Web's largest e-commerce sites and the number-one brand among e-commerce companies, according to the latest EquiTrend survey. In addition to its retail operations, Barnes & Noble is one of the largest book publishers in the world. Its subsidiary, Sterling Publishing, publishes over 1,100 new titles a year and has an active list of over 5,000 titles.

General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company's corporate Web site: http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Business Wire
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2005, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

 Reader Opinion

Title:

Comment:



 

Article Details
Printer friendly Cite/link Email Feedback
Publication:Business Wire
Geographic Code:1USA
Date:Apr 12, 2005
Words:995
Previous Article:Aegis Strongly Endorses New Policies Regarding Stun Devices.
Next Article:ARAMARK Recognized for Best On-Site Operator Menu by Nation's Restaurant News; MenuMasters Award Will Recognize Innovative Menu and Lunchroom Design...
Topics:



Related Articles
BARNES & NOBLE ANNOUNCES PLANS TO OPEN TWO NEW DISTRIBUTION CENTERS IN RENO AND ATLANTA.
Barnes & Noble and New England Booksellers Association Resolve Trademark Issues.
On Sunday, June 8, the Lincoln Triangle Barnes & Noble Will Stay Open Past Midnight to Sell Copies of Hillary Rodham Clinton's a Living History.
Barnes & Noble Signs Lease for Gilbert, Arizona, Store; Store Will Open in May 2005.
Barnes & Noble Signs Lease for Happy Valley, Arizona, Store; Store Will Open in May 2005.
Barnes & Noble Signs Lease for Brookfield, Wisconsin, Store Store Will Open in November 2004.
Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code Passes One Million Sold at Barnes & Noble.
Barnes & Noble to Present at the Prudential Equity Group Retail Conference.
Barnes & Noble.com Launches PC and Video Game Store; Huge Selection of New and Used Video Games, Consoles and Accessories Available On bn.com in...
According to the Spring 2005 EquiTrend Brand Study by Harris Interactive: Barnes & Noble Rated America's Number One Retail Brand for Overall Quality...

Terms of use | Copyright © 2008 Farlex, Inc. | Feedback | For webmasters | Submit articles