Naxos of America Begins Distribution of the Labels of the Honens International Piano Competition and the Sinfonieorchester Basel

FRANKLIN, TN--(Marketwire - Sep 4, 2012) - Naxos of America welcomes Honens and Sinfonieorchester Basel to its family of distributed labels in September 2012.

In 1991 philanthropist Esther Honens established Honens International Piano Competition with a $5-million endowment. Her dream was to create a stage in Calgary, and in Canada, for the world's most promising pianists. The Honens Competition takes place every three years in Calgary. Honens presents the world's leading pianists, innovative performance projects, and exclusive Canadian premieres through a critically acclaimed concert series in Calgary.

The Sinfonieorchester Basel is one of Switzerland's major orchestras and appears both in concert and at the opera house. For decades it has produced a wide array of highlights under the batons of many outstanding conductors including Armin Jordan, Nello Santi, Mario Venzago and Walter Weller. Today the Sinfonieorchester Basel numbers among Switzerland's leading musical ensembles, with some 100 highly qualified and highly motivated musicians. Its broad repertoire ranges effortlessly from the Viennese classics and to contemporary music. Whether at home or on its foreign tours, this internationally varied group of musicians constantly demonstrates its unique flexibility and artistic prowess. One of the orchestra's wishes came true in the 2009-10 season when its leadership was taken over by the renowned American conductor and pianist Dennis Russell Davies. In 2012, the orchestra founded its own label.

Naxos of America: Headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville, Naxos of America (http://www.facebook.com/NaxosUSA) is the #1 independent classical music distributor in the U.S. and Canada. Specializing in state-of-the-art distribution, marketing and promotion, Naxos of America distributes nearly 32,000 SKUs to traditional brick and mortar retail, as well as offering a comprehensive suite of services tailored to consumer direct fulfillment. Naxos of America is also the largest digital distributor of independent classical music, supplying a catalog of over 30,000 albums to hundreds of digital download and mobile outlets worldwide. Naxos of America offers marketing, e-marketing, publicity, e-publicity, physical and digital e-commerce services, licensing opportunities, streaming services, sales and customer service for all new releases and active catalog titles of Naxos Records and more than 150 distributed labels.