of the artists & repertory decisions but also for overseeing the increasingly distinctive look of the record jackets. Sterne oversaw several firsts for the label, including early electronic releases. Nonesuch commissioned Morton Subotnick's 1967 album Silver Apples of the Moon (made on the Buchla 100), and in 1966 released a 2-LP set of Moog sounds with 16-page booklet called The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music by Beaver & Krause (which spent 26 weeks in Billboard's Top 100 chart). Among the most notable achievements of Sterne's time at the label were the release of George Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children, inspired by the poems of Federico García Lorca, which sold more than 70,000 units; the recording of new works by Elliott Carter, including his first and second string quartets; and the commissioning and release of Charles Wuorinen's Time's Encomium, which became the first electronic work to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1970. Under Sterne, Nonesuch helped spark a ragtime revival in the United States with the release of a series of Scott Joplin piano rags performed by Joshua Rifkin. Sterne also launched the groundbreaking Explorer Series, building the foundation for the field of world music. Sterne's abrupt termination in December 1979 prompted some two dozen Nonesuch artists to write a letter to the editor of the New York Times speaking out against the decision; several noteworthy composers, Elliott Carter and Aaron Copland among them, sent a letter to the vice president of the parent company, Warner Communications, in protest. Sterne was replaced by the founder's younger brother, Keith Holzman, a production chief who, for the next five years, operated the label from Los Angeles. 1984–2016: Robert Hurwitz Former Blue Thumb Records founder Bob Krasnow, who assumed the chairmanship of Elektra Records in 1983, brought in the 34-year-old Bob Hurwitz in 1984, at the time the head of the US division of the Warner Bros. Records-distributed jazz label ECM Records, to run Nonesuch Records. Within the first two years under Hurwitz's leadership, Nonesuch released albums by such "new music" pioneers as Steve Reich (The Desert Music, 1985), John Adams (Harmonielehre, 1986), Philip Glass (Mishima, 1985), John Zorn (The Big Gundown, 1985), and Kronos Quartet (Kronos Quartet, 1986). (Kronos Quartet's 1992 album Pieces of Africa topped both the Billboard classical and world music charts.) Hurwitz established a jazz roster at the label, which included Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, and the World Saxophone