For 40 years, innova Recordings, the label of the American Composers Forum, has celebrated new music–whether classical, jazz, world, electronic and other genres, concepts, and approaches. Earlier this year, the label announced its first national call for new artists, which marked what Director of Recordings Chris Campbell has called a “paradigm shift” in how they approach and conduct business with the goals of making the recording process more collaborative, inclusive, equitable, and transparent.

 innova distributes the music across digital streaming platforms, helps the artists promote their work on social media, and negotiates licensing for artists whose works may be included in films, television, and other media. innova Recordings leverages their extensive connections for reduced fees for all production, distribution, and other costs, while building a sense of community in the selected artist cohort for mentoring and support services. In addition, artists of underrepresented genders–women, nonbinary artists, and men and women in the trans community–can receive additional support from the Elizabeth and Michel Sorel Charitable Organization. Artists retain 100% of their sales and rights.

To discuss this new model, we sat down with Campbell, who joined innova Recordings in 2003. He studied composition at Sarah Lawrence College under George Tsontakis, but admits that as an “impatient and impetuous” young man, he decided against graduate school to start working within the field–composing and working with composers–right away. In his position at innova Recordings, Campbell shares that he feels incredibly privileged to “witness all these beautiful things happening, and all this creative energy radiating out from all these different spots in the country.” As an active composer in addition to running the label at innova, his most recent album Orisin was released in May 2021 and has been described as “jewel of contemporary composition” (Arts & Culture Maven).

At the time of our conversation, Campbell was excited to discuss the new paradigm for innova Recordings, the new artists who were selected from the national call, and bright hopes for the future of new music. Campbell remains full of energy, inspiration, and yes, even impatience: “I guess I am still impetuous in some ways. I still feel like I have a lot of fighting spirit when it comes to certain issues.”

Colleen Kennedy: Let’s begin with the national call for artists last spring. How did that differ from how innova Recordings usually finds new artists?

Chris Campbell: Up until a few years ago, we'd been 100% reliant on a submission-based model, where artists already had to know about us in order to just find and initiate contact with us. That creates a barrier and boxes people out. Artists also had to have basically an all-but-finished product to be on the label. Essentially, they had to have their music in the can, already mastered, art lined up, and all these other aspects that created so many barriers and problems for an artist financially, economically, and artistically. Having to do that all by yourself is really complicated.

The label itself has been around since 1982 and has gone through several iterations over the years. When we were still the Minnesota Composers Forum the label began as a way to document McKnight Composer Fellowship winners, and then has sort of changed over the years to, frankly, reflect what the ecosystem needs. And that's why we're doing what we're doing now.

But one of the things since ‘82 that's been a throughline is we've really tried to support concepts and sounds that push music forward in new ways. We've never been concerned really about genre constraints or typical notions of marketability. And then, we've also really been inclined to take on the integrity of a work as defined by the artists and see what we can bring to the table to actualize that vision.

CK: Before the national call for artists, you tried a pilot program in the San Francisco Bay area. Why there? What artists did you sign and what did you learn to better facilitate the inaugural national call for artists?

CC: After a really long time of doing that backward step of listening to artists and learning what this ecosystem needs, in March 2021, we launched the Bay Area pilot, which we're rolling out releases for right now. Look forward to albums by Lewis Jordan, SHENSduo, Lisa Mezzacappa, Anne Hege, Melinda Martinez Becker and Nicolas Lell Benavides, and Julie Herndon. Saxophonist and composer Beth Schenck will be the first to share her new album in April 2022. With the pilot, we wanted to test everything out in a real world application, before we launched into the national call. It brought folks to the table who either previously thought that they weren't a good fit for whatever reason. innova has a catalog of almost 700 albums and that has value, but it's a big backpack to carry around that people assume things about. We wanted to make a break from that while still honoring our artists from before but to just articulate the message. The Bay Area pilot allowed us to institute our first curatorial panel. I have big ears, but I have blind spots and bias, just like anybody else. I think acknowledging that a cis white guy shouldn't be in charge of all decision making. Making space for other people and for other conversations are really important to our value system. The Bay Area Pilot allowed us to ask: Where are you at in the process, and what needs to be done? Let us listen. How can we leverage our expertise to tailor a unique experience for you?

CK: What was the panel experience like for the national call?

CC: The panel process was really edifying and interesting. But really, it takes a lot of listening. So that's been a joy of the panel, just listening, absorbing, and then trying to work within that. But that was a big thing that I'm really proud of: taking the unilateral decision making away from me. A big thing for me is just having seats at the table for folks–Olivia Shortt, Nina Shekhar, Darian Donovan Thomas, and Sarah Hennies–where they feel welcome. The panel stepped up to the task, took ownership, and it was just really cool. I was a total fly on the wall, and it was just such fun to listen to their conversations and watch them work through the process. It wasn’t just one person, some cigar-chomping record executive–running it. Instead, everybody was rowing in the same direction.

CK: Besides opening up to new artists that may not have a previous relationship with innova, what else changes? Let’s talk about how unique this model really is.

CC: We received really great feedback from the Bay Area artists who were in the pilot program, and developed a national call for artists, which was open from December 1, 2021 and closed January 7, 2022.

For this first national call, we selected the following eight artists: Anil Çamci, J.E. Hernández, Alexa Dexa, Shara Lunon, thingNY, Marshall R. Trammell, Ayanna Woods who uses the artist name Yadda Yadda, and a group consisting of Melanie Dyer, Todd Capp, Anna Gruman, and Kurt Ralske.

Basically it was an outgrowth of the label, but we tweaked some things. And its existence was really predicated on wanting to build support in the community, find artists from diverse backgrounds, and amplify their music. The biggest change was that the projects could be at any stage of completion. So folks could come to us with proof of concept or ideation. We were pretty vocal about wanting to hear from people and offer seats at the table. Artists, for the first time, could approach us and say, ‘Hey, I have this idea for such and such, how can you help us? How can you help me as an artist? Can you help me see this through from soup to nuts?’

The affiliate network is a new aspect of this national call. We offer that 100% of sales and ownership stays with the artists still. And there are many zero cost aspects: distribution, social media promotion, PR (on some levels), and licensing. And then the affiliate network includes reduced costs. This may be gratis or reduced costs. If an artist needs studio time, we'll try to figure it out with them on their behalf. Over four decades, we’ve built up goodwill and capital, and it's time to start using some of those relationships to partner on an even deeper level. Many producers and labels talk about wanting to make things better for artists, but let's just do it. We have the ability to not just topically address issues, but to make real changes.

CK: Speaking of real changes, let’s discuss the updated mission statement for the American Composers Forum that specifically addresses race and the Sorel Organization grants that supports artists from underrepresented genders. How does that all come into play for innova’s new model?

CC: When Vanessa Rose came on board during a period of leadership transition, she articulated right out of the gate, that this is an important thing that needed to change organizationally, because of perceptions, and noting that we were not serving our communities and our fellow artists. It’s easy to make changes when things are looking bad, but we don’t when things are ostensibly fine. It takes someone who has a specific personality to come in and say like, this is not acceptable. And Vanessa made us really look at our mission statement and see that if we're interested in an inclusive music ecosystem that's seeking to nurture and empower creative energy, then it was important to us to frame all that within the focus of racial equity. This makes us explicitly accountable, and operating within this frame of racial equity does not exclude diverse gender identities, musical languages, genres, ages, abilities, backgrounds, all those different definitions of American identity, but that framework helps us stay focused on the mission to get rid of barriers and be more communicative, transparent, and supportive. Changing the mission at both ACF and innova was really important to articulate that explicitly. This allows us to move in the direction that we truly wanted to move in.

We are super grateful that we found a partner in the Sorel Foundation. They have an amazing track record of supporting women and underrepresented composers and they immediately understood what we were trying to do. The Sorel Foundation was so great in terms of giving us additional funding to grant supplemental grants to people who identify as an underrepresented gender in their application, and wish to work with providers of underrepresented genders who are studio owners, engineers, design album art, and other aspects of the recording business. This again is the soup-to-nuts approach. This exemplifies the affiliate network. There’s not just one type of approach to music making and we hope to support all of that.

Discover More