Canada Baroque Records Ltd.

Canada Baroque Records Ltd.

Canada Baroque Records Ltd. Recording company established in Montreal in 1962 by Giveon (Jim) Cornfield (b Montreal ca 1926), who studied musicology in Israel before returning to Montreal in 1952. His intent was to establish a balance between the surfeit of recorded versions of well-known masterworks and the virtual absence of recordings of works by little-known composers. In 1966, of 92 LPs in the Baroque catalogue, 52 offered works not to be found on other North American labels. At the end of the 1960s Baroque was taken over by the US-based Everest group, and about 1973 the label expired.

Among the Canadian musicians who recorded for the Baroque label are Lise Boucher, Hyman Bress, Alexander Brott with the Soviet Radio Orchestra, Mario Duschenes, Kenneth Gilbert, Charles Houdret, Gilles Manny, Monique Marcil, the McGill Chamber Orchestra (with Jean-Pierre Rampal as soloist), Steven Staryk, Marie-Aimée Varro, and Jacques Verdon. Works by Canadian composers - Brott, Papineau-Couture, and Prévost - also were recorded.

Cornfield was music director for radio station CKVL-FM before emigrating to Los Angeles in the early 1970s. For the Everest Record Group he repackaged certain items from the Baroque catalogue under the Orion label.