Jason Victor Serinus

Come Wednesday evening, October 1, at 7:30pm EDT, jazz lovers throughout the greater New York City environs—that includes Brooklyn—will flock to Jazz at Lincoln Center to groove to triple Grammy-nominated composer/pianist David Chesky's quintet, Jazz in the New Harmonic. Folks unable to join Stereophile editor John Atkinson and others in the audience for the first show, or the second at 9:30pm, can listen to a live stream of the initial set here.

In a definite sign of the times, Sony Classical is poised to bring the 60-year old classic RCA Victor Living Stereo series to streaming, hi-rez download, and social media platforms. Beginning on Friday April 27, and lasting for two months, Living Stereo playlists—Living Stereo Spectaculars, Living Stereo Top 50, and Living Stereo Deep Cuts among them—will stream on Apple Music, Spotify, and Deezer.

I've always wanted to win the lottery so I could buy a pair of Jed Barber's much-coveted Joule Electra tube amps. I've spent hours in the Joule-Elrod room at several CESes, always entranced by the sound, but have never before heard the Joule LA150 Mk.2 preamp ($7000) and VZN 100 OTL monoblocks ($19,000/pair) paired with Merlin VSM MXE loudspeakers ($10,500.pair) and the Audio Aero Prestige CD player ($14,000). Wired with Cardas Golden Reference, this system did a superb job of bringing out the lovely, warm, full-range sound and delicious richness of Gary Karr's double bass on his Cisco Systems Adagio d’Albinoni CD.

We have lost a great artist. Mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, 52, who had previously triumphed over breast cancer, died at her home in Santa Fe on July 3. While The New York Times obituary did not specify the cause of death, other reports suggest she died from cancer, leading to speculation that the claims of back trouble and gall bladder inflammation that led to a string of cancellations in the past few years were related to a recurrence of the disease.