Music Minus One (MMO) is a music production and recording company in Westchester, New York. Their recordings are meant to be accompanied by the listener on whichever instrument (or voice type) is excluded from the recording, as an aid to practice, or as an accompaniment to home performance.
Background
Music Minus One was founded in 1950 by Irv Kratka, a 24-year-old college student. The company's first recording was devoted to Schubert's Trout Quintet, with all five instruments omitted in five different MMO's. This release received a full page review in 1953 in The New York Times. As a result, articles appeared in Look, Life, Time, Newsweek, and hundreds of papers across the United States and Europe.
In the following years, the company continued to release chamber music and jazz rhythm recordings utilizing New York. Stan Getz, Hank Jones, George Barnes, Max Roach, Julius Baker, Elaine Douvas, Armando Ghitalla, Stanley Drucker, Christian Reichert have contributed to MMO recordings.
Today, MMO offers close to nine hundred albums, devoted to classical, chamber music, opera, lieder, popular, jazz and religious music from all times and periods, from the Baroque, through the Classical and Romantic periods in music.
Sale to Hal Leonard
In 2016, the CEO of the Hal Leonard Corporation, Keith Mardak, purchased Music Minus One.
References
External links
UK Distributors of Music Minus One
NAMM Oral History Interview Irv Kratka reflects on the development of Music Minus One and the musicians on the recordings, September 13, 2005 New York Times "Records: Play Along" Sept 13, 1953 review of MMO Trout Quintet recording.