Telarc International Corporation is an independent record label, based in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, and founded in 1977 by two classically trained musicians and former teachers, Jack Renner and Robert Woods. Originally a classical music-only label, the label has had a long association with Ohio's two most famous orchestras: the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra, as well as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Telarc has since released music from other styles of music including jazz, blues and country music. In 1996, Telarc merged with another independent label, Heads Up, now a Telarc subsidiary.

In late 2005 both Telarc and Heads Up were bought by Concord Records. Today both labels operate as semi-autonomous units on the Concord Music Group.

Telarc is noted for the high quality of its recordings, encapsulated in the slogan "The Telarc Sound". Its engineers are highly regarded within the recording business, and have led Telarc to 40 Grammy Awards. In 2004 it received the "Label Of The Year" Award from Gramophone Magazine. Telarc was one of the first labels to begin recording music with a 20-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) in the late 1980s and started using 24-bit formats since 1996. Currently, the majority of Telarc's releases are (generally hybrid) SACDs based on DSD recordings.

Cameron Carpenter (born 1981) is an American organist known for his virtuosity, showmanship, technique and arrangements for the organ.

Carpenter has bachelor's and master's degrees from The Juilliard School in New York, having studied with Gerre Hancock, John Weaver, and Paul Jacobs. Though he is not religious, Carpenter was from 2008 to 2009 the artist-in-residence at Middle Collegiate Church in New York's East Village, where he played a four-manual virtual pipe organ that he designed for the broad ranging music of that church. Carpenter ended his residency in July 2009.

A champion of virtual pipe organs, Carpenter has been referred to as "extraordinary", "the most controversial organist in the world" and "meshing virtuosity with musical intelligence" while also attracting criticism.

Early in 2008, Telarc signed Carpenter to an exclusive five-album recording contract. His Telarc debut album, Revolutionary, was recorded as a CD and DVD at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City, and released September 23, 2008. The title comes from Carpenter's transcription of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude. The album made Carpenter the first organist ever to receive a Grammy nomination in the category Best Solo Instrumental Performance (without orchestra) for a solo album. His first commercial album was a 2006 CD/DVD, Pictures at an Exhibition, on SeeMusicDVD. It includes his arrangement of the programmatic piano work by Modest Mussorgsky, and his own improvisatory "New York City Sessions." Visuals for the Moussorgsky were created by Marshall Yaeger and his Kaleidoplex. The recording was made at Trinity Church, New York.

Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 – December 28, 1937) was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects. Much of his piano music, chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music has entered the standard concert repertoire.

Ravel's piano compositions, such as Jeux d'eau, Miroirs, Le tombeau de Couperin and Gaspard de la nuit, demand considerable virtuosity from the performer, and his orchestral music, including Daphnis et Chloé and his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, uses a variety of sound and instrumentation.

Ravel is perhaps known best for his orchestral work Boléro (1928), which he considered trivial and once described as "a piece for orchestra without music".

According to SACEM, Ravel's estate earns more royalties than that of any other French composer. According to the law of most countries (including all members of the World Trade Organization), Ravel's works have been in the public domain since January 1, 2008, in most countries.

Leonard Edward Slatkin (born September 1, 1944) is an American conductor and composer.

Slatkin was born in Los Angeles to a musical family that came from areas of the Russian Empire now in Ukraine. His father Felix Slatkin was the violinist, conductor and founder of the Hollywood String Quartet, and his mother Eleanor Aller was cellist with the quartet. His brother Frederick, now a cellist, traced the family's original name as Zlotkin, and adopted that form of the family surname for himself professionally. Frederick Zlotkin has spoken of the family lineage as follows:

"The Zlotkin/Slatkin lineage is Russian-Jewish. The first Zlotkin arrival to the US was Felix's father, grandpa Chaim Peretz Zlotkin, who came to settle with relatives in St. Louis in 1904; he (or the clerk at Ellis Island) changed the name. He probably came from the town of Mogilev [now Mohyliv-Podilskyi], from a shtetl (the Russians forced most Jews to live in villages outside of the major cities)...The Altschuler [Aller] side of the family is really rife with musicians. Grisha's uncle, Modest Altschuler, was a cellist (making me 4th generation) and he had quite a career. Among other things, he did the St. Petersburg premiere of Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence Sextet. When he came to America he formed the Russian Symphony Orchestra (early 1900's)."

Simone Dinnerstein (born September 18, 1972) is an American classical pianist who became celebrated, both critically and commercially, for her self-financed recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations, released in 2007.

Simone Andréa Dinnerstein was born in New York, New York, USA. She studied in the pre-college program at the Manhattan School of Music with Solomon Mikowsky. She later attended The Juilliard School of Music and was a student of Peter Serkin. She also studied in London with Maria Curcio.

When the Telarc label released the self-financed recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations (Telarc CD-80692), her career was "launched into the stratosphere" with the album outselling The White Stripes on Amazon.com. In its first week of commercial release, the recording was at No.1 on the Billboard classical music CD sales chart. The disc appeared on a number of “Best of 2007” lists, including those of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Time Out New York, several radio stations, iTunes “Editor’s Choice Best Classical,” Amazon.com Best CDs of 2007, and Barnes & Noble's Top 5 Debut CDs of 2007.