It looks a lot like carrying coals to Newcastle - just as the coal market is collapsing.
Yet Harmik Grigorian, a 66-year-old Ontario music buff and former oil executive who opened his first classical record store in 1980, has boldly inaugurated the fourth L'Atelier Grigorian in a town with plenty of classical retail outlets and at a time when the compact disc is said to be in its death throes.
"This is a city of music," Grigorian explained last week at an opening cocktail in his St.
Denis St. shop that was attended by an array of Canadian label managers and musicians. "Statistics say that Montreal and Quebec sell 60 per cent of classical music, the rest is sold in the rest of Canada.
"It is a big market, a cultured city. People love classical music here. I think there is room for everybody.
"
Nestled in the thicket of cafes and restaurants across from the Theatre St. Denis, the long mainfloor space was a gloomy brasserie before Grigorian spotted it last April on a walking tour with a local record producer. Renovations, he said, including fine made-in-Canada maple display cabinets, cost about $250,000.
L'Atelier Grigorian - his stores in Oakville, Toronto and London, Ont., have the same French name - is not alone in the neighbourhood.
The main branch of Archambault, the biggest comprehensive music store in Montreal and a Latin-Quarter fixture for decades, is a block away.
Other classical watering holes include HMV, two Nicholas Hoare bookstores and the Archambault branches in Place des Arts and Les Ailes. Not to mention a few second-hand shops popular with collectors.
Grigorian is convinced that his premium operation offers something different - namely, everything.
"Every Decca is here, every Deutsche Grammophon is here, every Hyperion," he said, referring to three notable European labels. "We are a full-catalogue store."
His philosophy is to embrace, rather than to lament, the fragmentation and apparent oversupply that make the sale of classical recordings so risky and so unpopular among retailers.
The Montreal store carries between 60,000 and 70,000 titles.
As those numbers suggest, the classical market is not like the others. A new release by Gloria Estefan or Snoop Dog competes only with other Latin diva or hip-hop titles.
A new recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is up against dozens and dozens of versions of itself.
Furthermore, "classical" encompasses centuries of music and formats ranging from Renaissance motets to solo violin to symphony orchestra and opera. It is not uncommon for a classical title at any given store to sell at a glacial rate of one unit per year.
No matter. "Even if a CD sells once in two years, we carry it," Grigorian boasts. "When a customer says: 'Oh, my god, I was looking for this Les Contes d'Hoffmann,' that makes my day.
"
He grabbed a copy of the Offenbach opera from the shelf for emphasis.
Happily, those single units add up. Grigorian expects first-year sales of between
$1 million and $1.
5 million.
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