Boutique record label makes big splash in the world of jazz

Volume 1, Number 50 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | Aug. 31 - Sept. 6, 2007

By Lucas Mann

In a small office on West 38th Street sits the headquarters of one of New York City’s most vibrant jazz record labels, where Christine Berthet, known to readers of Chelsea Now as the indefatigable co-chair of Community Board 4’s Transportation Committee, spends most of her time when she’s not taking the floor at board hearings.

Berthet works with her husband, Francois Zalacain, to run Sunnyside records, a mom-and-pop company that is a growing force in the world of jazz.

“We started in 1982 and just kept on,” said Zalacain, sitting at a small table in the office, with an iconic picture of Harlem’s jazz greats assembled on a stoop, on the wall behind him. “Now we are celebrating our 25th anniversary. For the past five years, we’ve expanded beyond just being a jazz label. We’ve been producing and licensing material, especially world music from Europe.”

Sunnyside has seen a lot of change in their quarter of a century of operation.

“When we started, all we were putting out was vinyl,” Zalalcain mused. “Now some of our old vinyl albums are selling for a lot of money to collectors because there only a dozen or so copies left.”

One of Berthet’s main responsibilities at Sunnyside is to make sure that Sunnyside is able to keep afloat financially and stay as current as possible with changing music technologies.

“I need to make projects profitable and know where we stand financially,” Berthet explained. “Every record used to be one item; now as we evolve into the digital world, they’re split up into 10 tracks that can be sold individually. We’ve had to change all our systems and switch an enormous amount of data.”

Berthet’s work ethic and business experience has been integral to the company, a “purist” label that employs all of five people and places a premium on quality records.

“A lot of other small companies don’t understand cash requirements,” Berthet said. There’s a huge difference between sales and profit. People are excited about sales, but you need to tighten your costs to be able to keep going. If you lose money on a project, you have to recover on another one.”

And so Sunnyside Records has stayed very much afloat. Including reissues, Zalacain anticipates a production of close to 40 records in 2007. They have also managed to stay true to the ethos of their company.

“The music is all that we look for,” Zalacain said emphatically. “The quality and maturity of the music—there needs to be depth. Either the music touches you or it doesn’t.”

Zalacain also stands behind his own instincts as both an appreciator and a provider of Jazz music.

“Jazz, without trying to be pompous, requires a certain level of education,” he said. “It’s like the visual arts: You need to learn how to look at a painting. Jazz requires more of that type of learning, but once you get it….” Here, he ran out of words, and only a satisfied smile and some excited hand gestures could express his feelings for the genre that he has made his life.

After decades of corporate life, from a career at IBM to running software companies, Berthet finally joined her husband’s business in 2003, with the same passion for music that he always had.

“I’m happy to be out of that corporate world,” Berthet said with a smile. “For me, Jazz is a melting pot. There are deep roots in so many different places, and it’s this evolving language.”

The husband-and-wife team continue to put their stamp on that evolving language by giving their artists the freedom to produce the music that they think is best.

“[Working at Sunnyside] is being allowed to realize your music the way you want it, not the way a marketing student thinks it should sound to sell,” said Jerome Sabbagh, a young tenor saxophonist who released the album “Pogo” on Sunnyside in April of this year. “But it’s also knowing that, because people at Sunnyside like the music, they will make an effort to market it to the best of their abilities.”

The ability to foster that kind of freedom is what Berthet finds so exciting about her new role, far away the world of from big business. She and Zalacain never try to control artists and instead let the music take them where it may.

“We never take an artist who is hungry and make him sign away his future with no counterpart,” said Zalacain. “If our artists find a better deal, good for them. They have power over us. Because of that, I think we have a very good relationship with the musician community.”

Zalacain got into the jazz-label business not as an entrepreneur but as a jazz aficionado.

“I used to hang out in jazz clubs, and I became good friends with a great pianist—we’re still friends,” he said. “That was the catalyst. I decided to produce an album for him just for fun. I was still working at IBM when I made those first albums, but everything needs a spark like that to get started.”

While Christine entered Sunnyside’s offices after a much longer corporate purgatory, she also entered as a fan, listening to and supporting her husband’s artistic roster for years. She still remembers the first time that jazz touched her.

“I must have been 4 or 5, in Northern Africa with my family,” she said with a whimsical smile. “It was in the garden of this casino, and there was this whole orchestra, all beautifully dressed. I vividly remember being there for that. [Jazz] is such instinctive, fun, happy music. They sounded happy to be playing it.”

Berthet’s face, youthful and intense, always wearing a smile, dovetails easily with the tone of the music she describes. At the same time, she pulls long hours combining her work for Sunnyside with her long days working with Community Board 4.

“It’s amazing to me that she has the time to do anything else,” said Jay Marcus, Berthet’s co-chair on C.B. 4’s Transportation Committee. “She spends an inordinate amount of time with board activities. She is an incredibly motivated and hardworking person, who becomes intimately knowledgeable about the topics she’s involved with, as well as the people.”

Indeed, when she spoke to Chelsea Now on a stifling Wednesday afternoon recently, Berthet had just come from an all-morning meeting on congestion pricing to meet her husband in the office.

The office itself is lined with CDs. Floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, there are recordings in every corner, and somehow Zalacain knows what and where each one is. Climbing a ladder, he flips through boxes of newly released material, pulling out a striking array of musical styles.

There’s “Excavation,” the contemporary jazz guitar album by Ben Monder; the high-energy, 1991 release “MegaWatts” by Wynton Marsalis’ drummer, Jeff “Tain’” Watts, which has a fierce, old-school be-bop feel; the American release of a Serge Gainsbourg recording, displaying the results of a collaboration between the French Leonard Cohen and the Roots musicians of Kingston, Jamaica. Finally, there’s the Sunnyside 25th Anniversary Collection, chronicling the best of their catalog.

The eclectic releases continue in August and September of this year, with two different recordings from New York-based saxophonist Chris Potter, one with an indie-rock vibe infused into his jazz, and another that Zalacain describes as “almost chamber music kind of writing.” There’s also work from young tenor saxophonist Bill MacHenry and pianist Helen Sung.

After a quarter of a decade in the game, Sunnyside has managed to keep putting out the music they like. With husband and wife working side by side, they seem well-positioned to be successful in the changing future of music. However, they know better than to get too comfortable.

“Nobody knows what this business will be like in five years,” Zalacain pointed out. “We have no idea where we’re going.”

Added Bethet: “You just have to ride the wave and be flexible, and always try to keep the music going.”