Innocence rewarded: today's high cost of recording kills many projects before they ever get off the ground. But William Bolcom found a cost-effective way to record his mammoth Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

In 1992, composer William Bolcom asked a record-producer friend what it would cost to commit his gigantic symphonic setting of William Blake's complete Songs of Innocence and of Experience to compact disc. Written for hundreds of musicians, a full symphonic choir and orchestra, along with solo folk, country, cabaret, rock and madrigal singers, Bolcom's sprawling two-and-a-half-hour work was given a $375,000 price tag back then, for a traditional recording using professional musicians.

"Today it'd probably cost twice that sum," said Bolcom cheerfully by telephone from the Chelsea Hotel in New York, midway through a string of East Coast cabaret-song recitals with his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris. Yet the Naxos recording released this month--with Leonard Slatkin conducting and sopranos Christine Brewer, Measha Brueggergosman and Ilana Davidson, Broadway actor/singer Nathan Lee Graham and Morris joining student orchestral and choral forces from the University of Michigan--came in at less than $20,000.

The recording effort was grounded in both the community spirit of the University of Michigan, where Bolcom has long taught composition, and the shared desire of Bolcom's colleagues to see it done. It also signaled the innovative approaches that composers, performers and arts organizations now bring to recording after a stiff period of consolidation and retrenchment in the record industry.

Bolcom had faced prolonged frustration over failed attempts to get Songs of Innocence and of Experience recorded. A 1996 live performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by Leonard Slatkin seemed to hold promise, but the orchestra couldn't secure the Royal Festival Hall for a second night, to provide for intercutting. "Leonard tried to bird-dog it several times," said Bolcom. "He also planned to do it with the Washington National Symphony, but then Sept. 11 happened, and it was scrapped."

More recently, Telarc showed some interest, but Bolcom rejected the idea of a three-CD set at full price, given the digital-copying climate. "I figured that $45-50 for a guy to buy it in the store wouldn't be very appealing," he explained. "Instead, we'd get one guy who'd buy it and make 10 ...