Five Grammy(R) Awards for Artists, Engineers and Producers From Naxos of America Family of Distributed Labels

FRANKLIN, TN--(Marketwire - Feb 13, 2012) - Artists and producers from Naxos and its distributed labels were honored with five Grammy Awards at the 54^th Annual Grammy Awards.

Composer Robert Aldridge and librettist Herschel Garfein's opera Elmer Gantry won Best Contemporary Classical Composition. This Naxos recording with the Florentine Opera Chorus and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra also won Best Engineered Album, Classical (Byeong-Joon Hwang & John Newton, engineers; Jesse Lewis, mastering engineer). The New York Times called Elmer Gantry "... an unabashedly populist piece. The music is kinetic, vividly scored and steeped in American vernacular idiom; the storytelling is urgent."

Naxos artists, percussionist Christopher Lamb and conductor Giancarlo Guerrero also won the Best Classical Instrumental Solo Grammy for their Naxos recording of Joseph Schwantner's Concerto for Percussion & Orchestra, with the Nashville Symphony. Christopher Lamb is the Principal Percussionist of the New York Philharmonic.

Steven Mackey, tenor Rinde Eckert and Eighth Blackbird won Best Small Ensemble Performance for their recording on the Cedille label of Lonely Motel - Music from Slide featuring music by Steven Mackey. Of his own composing Mackey wrote: "... the daily act of exploration and discovery is as important to me as the finished product."

Producer Judith Sherman won Producer of the Year, Classical for six different recordings on Cedille (Capricho Latino, Notable Women, The Soviet Experience, Vol. 1, Winging It), Sono Luminus (85th Birthday Celebration, Claude Frank) and Innova (Speak!), all distributed by Naxos. Judith Sherman is a ten-time Grammy Award nominee, and a three-time winner.

Jim Selby, CEO of Naxos of America, said: "My congratulations to the artists, engineers and producers involved in these projects. It is their dedication and creative genius that makes the music business so exciting and rewarding."

Naxos of America 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.