Ex-Virgin execs find harmony in 12 parts

It’s not just artists who are finding themselves displaced by the uncertain major-label climate and are looking for new career vistas. Former music executives are also seeking new horizons.

For a team of former Virgin Records executives, that horizon is the People’s Republic of China. There they found a group they believe is perfect for audiences that have embraced such genre-crossing acts as Enya, Deep Forest, Enigma, Yanni and the “Riverdance” production.

The Twelve Girls Band is an ensemble of a dozen young Chinese women playing such traditional folk instruments as the pipa (a sort of lute) and yang qin (similar to a hammered dulcimer) in a blend of ancient and modern styles. The group has already become a bona fide phenomenon in Japan, selling more than 2 million albums and creating hysteria on a concert tour last year.

The idea of bringing the group to North America appealed to Ken Pedersen, who at Virgin Records was one of the principals behind the successful “Now That’s What I Call Music” hits collections and oversaw the company’s associated labels, including world music-oriented Luaka Bop and Real World.

Pedersen, who left Virgin in a 2002 corporate shakeup, was in the process of starting a label consortium called New River Music when he got a call from a Japanese business partner last October. A CD of the Twelve Girls Band arrived the next day, and within a week Pedersen was in Beijing to meet with the group’s handlers. Soon he was devising a business plan that would draw on the success he’d had with such concept projects as “Moods,” a series of CDs compiling ethereal, soothing music. Key to the plan is direct marketing television campaigns and live appearances on TV shows and in concert.

“When I met with them I explained my experience with the ‘Now’ series, with ‘Moods,’ with Yanni, experience that didn’t involve radio airplay,” Pedersen says. “How does this become the next ‘Riverdance’? That’s a project that appeals to a slightly older audience, people who don’t go to record stores every week.”

The plan also involved assembling a team made up largely of people who had successes in the music world but were not currently working for labels. Ray Cooper, former Virgin Records America president and one of the key developers of the Spice Girls, is helping design the group’s presentation to the American and European markets, while other now-independent industry veterans have been enlisted for aspects including publicity and art design.

A distribution deal for the project was made with EMI Music Marketing, which is run by Phil Quartararo, EMI North America executive vice president -- and another former Virgin president.

“My attraction to this is because it is that overused word -- ‘unique,’ ” says Cooper, who has been involved with environmental projects and music consulting since leaving Virgin in the company’s 2002 makeover.

“There’s nothing that competes with it in this marketplace that tends to get saturated with anything. They managed to pull off the feat of selling in Japan in the many millions. It would seem that if it’s presented in the right way in America it has a chance of succeeding here.”

Part of the strategy involves reaching out to a Western audience. The group has recorded an instrumental version of Coldplay’s hit “Clocks” that has gotten airplay on KCRW-FM (89.9), as well as Enya’s “Only Time” and the “Riverdance” piece “Reel Around the Sun.” But the rest of “Eastern Energy,” an album that will be released in the U.S. on Aug. 17, is based on traditional Chinese melodies.

The initial promotion effort has just begun. TV ads appeared in a handful of test markets and resulted in 1,100 orders for the album, according to Pedersen.

The group will come to the U.S. next month for a series of concerts starting with an Aug. 12 show at UCLA’s Royce Hall, plus appearances on morning TV shows around the country.

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Camper steps into the great divide

Camper VAN BEETHOVEN leader David Lowery knows one thing that can really scare people is the idea of a concept album and a rock-opera performance. So when the reunited band plays at the Sunset Junction street festival in Silver Lake on Aug. 22, attendees won’t be subjected to a complete run-through of its upcoming album, “New Roman Times,” the group’s first since 1989.

But Lowery did compose the album, due Oct. 12 from Vanguard Records, as a coherent piece, portraying what he calls a “sci-fi, alternative-reality North America.”

“There’s this whole notion that there’s two Americas, the red states and the blue states,” says Lowery, who describes himself politically as a “rabid moderate.”

It’s a pretty dark tale, following a soldier who’s sent to war and returns injured and disillusioned, falling into drug addiction and eventually becoming a terrorist. Lowery stresses that it is not meant as a comment on the war in Iraq, but rather as a vehicle for examining divisiveness in American politics and culture.

But he did reach out to soldiers, including some serving in Iraq, to lend some authenticity to the situations portrayed.

“I went to a few military chat rooms on the Internet,” he says. “I told people who I was and what I was doing and my views. People volunteered. I’d ask about favorite weapons systems, things that are cool. The story is told through the eyes of a soldier. My father was in the military. I have a long history of mixed feelings about anything to do with anti-war protest.”

And it’s not all heavy, in the spirit of the Santa Cruz-originated band’s legacy of wry wit.

“I hope that the humor comes through, though I realize a lot of it is dark humor,” he says. “It does, after all, involve space aliens. That’s important to me. A Camper record is never finished until it mentions space aliens.”