Bigotry Against the USA

The Anti-American Classical Recording Industry

Major record labels haven't been signing and developing American concert pianists since Richard Brandson sold Virgin to EMI. Before he sold the label, I signed a contract with the New York based Virgin Classics. My debuting release, Streetwise, made the top 100 charts in American retail stores.
I introduced a new generation of Americans to classical music. 

Streetwise was creating a financial foundation for the New York offices to sign additional American artists. This was a stark contrast to the Virgin offices in England, Germany and France that had failed releases with typically anemic sales figures that didn't justify the recording costs. American success threatened the European agenda to flood the market with their homeland artists.

Banned in England!

Streetwise was banned in England and all but 3 European countries by Richard Brandson's European employees. They broke the news to me while giving me the VIP treatment in London. They said that an American with a punk image would make the classical customers in the record stores uncomfortable. They insisted that Nigel Kennedy's punk looks (a classical star on another label) were acceptable because he was European. They may have limited my sales in Europe, but the sales figures in the USA were so strong that I became the #1 selling artist on the worldwide label.  
 

Dirty Tricks

Once EMI took over Virgin Records in 1992, they closed the New York offices and engaged in dirty tricks, like changing the release date of my Royce Concerto four times on one year. It was obvious that they had an agenda to disrupt my career momentum. My manager, Mike Caffey, and I met with Phil Quarteraro, Virgin's rock label President, in an effort to get the album released. The President said that he would have to be stupid not to release an album by an artist who appeared on The Tonight Show and sold as many records as I did. But he needed to get permission from the European executives before he could proceed. The change of ownership resulted in a change in the power structure where Europeans took control over American classical releases. Quarteraro spoke with my manager the next day, and told him that the Europeans wouldn't let him release my second album. My manager said that Quarteraro was very angry about what they were doing.


Team success ratio in the recording industry  
 Classical pianists who started recording for major labels from 1990 to present

# of albums on Billboard against total # of releases
Team USA   - 1 out of 1  100%
Team China - 8 out of 36  22%
Team Europe - 0 out of 341  0%  


Are Chinese and European Pianists Superior to Americans?

No, they're inferior. The top Chinese pianist's career took off when he got got away with scamming audiences with simplified versions of Liszt. All of the European recording acts who recorded Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 before me, were dishonest virtuosos who faked the octave ending. Most of them changed the order of several hundred notes, so their hands didn't have to move in opposite directions. They're on YouTube. The new Europeans aren't any better. They sound like a train wreck when they get to the notes they can't play.     



Conclusion:

The classical recording industry is not a legitmate business. It's no wonder that the classical awards were removed from the Grammy Awards show. In 1992, the last major label that signed new American pianists was shut down. On their website, Billboard published an industry insider's frustration about this. 

For 20 years, Europeans have hogged the business, releasing over 300 recordings of their new pianists, while allowing only 1 release by a new American. The world has resoundingly rejected the European recordings. Not one of them made it to Billboard. The only Americans left on major labels are the veterans. The presence of elder pianists like Murray Parahia or Steven Hough doesn't justify or excuse the blackballing of the new ones. 

This systematic suppression of American pianists, may be good news for China, but it has destroyed a lot of jobs in the USA. Each successful American recording artist represents a lot of jobs in the private sector, and provides a financial foundation for signing more virtuosos, which creates even more jobs. 

It 's time for an American Spring in classical music.