SSI 2013

One doesn’t normally think of a private concert by a gifted recording artist as a particularly bad way to start the day, but. . .

On Saturday morning at SSI, I stepped into the Oracle Audio room just in time for owner Jacques Reindeau to invite me to hear a few selections from the album Blue Mind by the Montreal-based composer and chanteuse Anne Bisson, played on an almost all-Oracle system—with the artist standing in front of me, singing along with her recorded self. Thus did the lovely Ms. Bisson take the floor, sometimes singing along in unison, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in counterpoint, and, at one moment, accompanying the sung line with a soft sprechgesang. I was enchanted. And, yes, with but one exception, I was spoiled for the rest of the day, and I grumbled inwardly every time I heard notes that were less real and less lovely.