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Nashville, Tennessee, home to the famous Grand Ole Opry, is perhaps best known as America's country music capital. But you're just as likely to hear the sounds of a violin as a fiddle because the world’s largest classical music label has its North American headquarters right on Nashville’s doorstep. Naxos Records is located in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville. The label has more than 7,000 recordings in its catalog, and stores more than four million CDs in the warehouse. Shrink-wrapped CDs and music DVDs are stacked on row after row of shelves 10 meters high and 100 meters long. Naxos ships 1,000 customer orders from its Tennessee warehouse every day. It’s quite an accomplishment for a 25-year-old company that began life as a budget label with a reputation for recording minor works by obscure orchestras. “To this day, they still record hungry young orchestras that don’t have much in the way of a recording profile,” says Jim Svejda, author of “The Insider’s Guide to Classical Music,” and host of a nationally syndicated classical music radio program. “The Fort Smith Symphony in Arkansas is actually making recordings. The Grand Rapids Symphony in Michigan is recording symphonies by Adolphus Hailstork which are not easy to play, and they’re making absolutely superb recordings.” According to Svejda, right from the beginning, Naxos distinguished itself by having those orchestras record music beyond the standard repertoire. | 
