Planet M Records is a Seattle-based, independent, artist-led record label, specializing in Classical music with an emphasis on new music, co-founded by musicians Michael Jinsoo Lim and Melia Watras.
 

Michael Jinsoo Lim, Director and Co-Founder
Violinist Michael Jinsoo Lim has been praised by Gramophone for playing with “delicious abandon” and hailed by the Los Angeles Times as a “conspicuously accomplished champion of contemporary music,” while his performances have been described as “a tour de force” and “bewitching” by the Seattle Times.  Concertmaster and solo violinist for the internationally-acclaimed Pacific Northwest Ballet, Lim’s solo appearances with the company include performances in Paris, New York City, Los Angeles, Washington DC and Seattle, in concertos by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bach, Max Richter and others. Lim was co-founder of the award-winning Corigliano Quartet, with whom he toured and recorded for twenty years and appeared on over a dozen albums, including the groups’s Naxos label CD which was honored as one of The New Yorker’s Ten Best Classical Recordings of the Year. His discography can be found on Naxos, Planet M, Sono Luminus, DreamWorks, Albany, Bridge, CRI, Bayer Records, RIAX and New Focus. His new solo album Kinetic, featuring world premieres of newly-commissioned works by Leilehua Lanzilotti, Paola Prestini and Melia Watras, will be released in 2025. Lim has served on the faculty of the Banff Centre, taught at Indiana University as a guest professor, and currently serves on the faculty of Cornish College of the Arts.

Melia Watras, Co-Founder
Melia Watras has been hailed by Gramophone as “an artist of commanding and poetic personality” and by The Strad as “staggeringly virtuosic.” As a violist, composer and collaborative artist, she has sustained a distinguished career as a creator and facilitator of new music and art.

Watras’s much-lauded work as a recording artist spans nearly three decades, with 10 solo albums and 13 others as violist of the acclaimed Corigliano Quartet. Her recordings have been described as “an exquisite world in which beauty and dreams flirt with sorrow” (The WholeNote), “a rare balance of emotional strength and technical delicacy” (The American Record Guide), “a beautiful celebration of 21st century viola music” (The Strad), and “astounding and both challenging and addictive to listen to” (Strings).

Her compositions have been performed throughout the US and in Europe, broadcast on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, and can be found on the albums The almond tree duos; Kinetic; Partita Party; Play/Write; String Masks; 3 Songs for Bellows, Buttons and Keys; Firefly Songs; Schumann Resonances and 26.

Watras is currently Professor of Viola and Chair of Strings at the University of Washington School of Music, where she holds the Ruth Sutton Waters Endowed Professorship. In 2024, the American Viola Society commissioned a new composition by Watras and presented her with the prestigious Maurice W. Riley Award, for her distinguished contributions to the viola as a performer, composer, teacher and leader.