Leading conductor writes in praise of our lost record stores


'Hello Bob, your post on the closure of Prelude Records struck a chord with me, as it doubtless will with many others. Great stores like yours and my Serenade Records in Washington DC are authors of far, far more than they can ever know. The obituary of Nesim Revah who established and ran the shop that was my second home as a very young man can be read here. I didn't know that much about him until reading this. He was always super kind to me, a young black kid with what probably seemed either highly sophisticated or weirdly iconoclastic musical tastes. I learned of Medtner, Glazunov, Gliere, and so many others from Serenade Records. Eventually, Nesim found out what I was studying, and when the Washington Post did a little piece on me, he totally surprised me by cutting it out of the paper and posting it in a very prominent spot in the shop so all could see. (I'm actually getting a bit teary recalling this, now decades in the past, as it moved me so at the time.) Below is the story that appeared in the Post. No one comes from nowhere,and we all receive help and encouragement when least we expect' - email received from John McLaughlin Williams who is seen above and below.

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