19’40” is a unique label that the founders Sebastiano De Gennaro, Enrico Gabrielli and Francesco Fusaro describe as, music for adventurous people. Approaching their music platform as more of a recording series, publishing a wide range of genres such as library music, contemporary classical, film and video game music but with a classical music mindset.

In correlation with their first various artist release earlier this year, I sent over some questions to Francesco Fusaro about their labels representation, experimentation in the scene today and what the future holds for 19’40”.

Blake Creighton: What influenced you all to create a new model for people to interact with your label? 

When creating 19’40”, which we think of as a recording series or collection rather than a record label, we considered the mail-order private press business model, like those ‘Masterpieces of Classical Music’ series from the heyday of vinyl records. This is because the idea of community has been embedded in what we do since the beginning: we don’t like the idea of a single customer just dropping by our website and bagging some random stuff (but if that’s you, we can still be friends, and thank you for your custom!). We like to think we are connecting little dots worldwide with every single release, with the dots being our lovely subscribers!

What do you find unique about the music that you have represented over the years and in particular to this latest release? 

Well, going back to that idea of the ‘Masterpieces of Classical Music’ we mentioned before: we like to think that some of the classical, contemporary and classical-influenced music of 19’40” will constitute a supplement to the already popular and well-established classics of the canon. We describe our approach to the music as “playful seriousness” or “informed playfulness”: we like to cross over different genres (library music, film and video game music, and so on) but with a classical music mindset. This is why our music can strike a chord with open-minded people worldwide.

Experimentation in the scene is strong, what do you believe is the drive behind experimentation as a musician and also as a label? 

Experimentation is having fun with the material you are working on, and being playful with it in a child-like, but not childish, mode. This is probably why many people in the scene favour experimenting over planning. As a label with a fixed set of dates to work with (we already know every release date up until the next three years), we favour planning over experimentation. That is also because we work with notated music, so we already know where the experiment will lead us. Much of the guesswork has already been done for you by the composer. 

This is your debut digital compilation, what drew you to create this compilation and what do you want it to represent? 

We love numerology; it’s a discipline that fascinates us and informs a lot of what we do at 19’40”. So it seemed appropriate for us to try something new after our 19th release, Musica Politica. It was time for a compilation that could present old and new listeners with the variety of music we have dealt with. And we must admit we are pretty happy with the result!

You speak about cross border community, how does your label represent that and how do you wish to facilitate it in the future? 

Albeit having a solid presence in Italy, where most of our operations are now based, what we offer musically is not bound to a specific region or place. Indeed, some of our releases should (and have) appealed more to listeners in the US and UK, for instance.At the Gates of the Twilight Zone and Plantasia were planned with the notion that Bernard Herrmann and Mort Garson fans would be drawn to them because of their fame (and hopefully also because of our unusual take on their repertoire). 

What is on the horizon for 19’40”? 

We have just released Bo_Lé_Ro, which pays homage to one of the most iconic compositions in European art music. It comprises Sebastiano De Gennaro’s OST for Frédéric Xavier Liwer’s short art film Les Quatre Mille Coups and Enrico Gabrielli’s Bo_Lé_Ro, a suite of six movements and a reinterpretation of Maurice Ravel’s original Bolero. We are working on the other two releases that will see the light of day this year: Black Classical Music, dedicated to eight composers of African descent, and a currently undisclosed album on the orchestral music of an incredibly influential French chansonnier. We invite readers to subscribe to 19’40” to get those hand-numbered CDs delivered to their homes once ready!