LATEST ADDITIONS

A fun fixture of every audio show is the hanging badge-on-a-lanyard we all acquire at the registration table. I'm glad for these things—at least the large-print editions—because they help me overcome the steady embarrassment I feel because I can't remember any names. If you know me, I am sure you have talked to me while I've stared at your belly trying hopelessly to memorize your name.

I could ride my bike there from Brooklyn. What's not to like?

This review and its companion that will follow next week spotlight two very different and equally recommendable recordings of contemporary music with a common theme: the quest for freedom and justice in perilous times. This week's special, Lament/Witches' Sabbath (New Focus Recordings), due out today (November 9), contains four works by Mathew Rosenblum, an East Coast composer who occasionally ventures into forbidden territory as he blends percussion, acoustic instruments, electronics, voice and microtonal elements in extremely visceral, moving, and sometimes gut-wrenching ways.

Japanese audiophiles venerate American high-end audio components, paying huge sums for vintage Marantz tube amplifiers, racks of Levinson ML-2s, and early Audio Research tube preamplifiers. The balance of trade, at the high end anyway, hasn't been reciprocated: Japanese high-end amplifiers and preamplifiers have not received as positive a reception in the US. Perhaps it was a matter of styling, but the sonics of the Sony Esprit line and the class-A Stax amplifiers did not receive the following they might have, had the products been American.

"I've got six hours to get ready for 30 hours of show time so an attendee can listen for 10 minutes." Thus did Doug White, proprietor of the Philadelphia-area dealer The Voice That Is, describe the challenge of setting up a system for a show such as Capital Audiofest. (When I asked, Do you use a spectrum analyzer?, White said Yes, and smiled and pointed to his brow.) The results of his expertise—no other word for it—were in full flower in a system that, though far from humble, featured the least expensive loudspeakers I've heard in a TVTI system: Tidal's Vimberg-series Mino ($29,000/pair).

I began my Sunday morning at Capital Audiofest with a portion of one of Malcolm Arnold's jaunty overtures: not quite sacred music, but it was nonetheless magnificent in the room sponsored by Gryphon Audio and retailer 20/20 Evolution Systems. In addition to having appropriate weight and realistic die-away, the sound of mallet on bass drum had the most tonally realistic thud I recall hearing through a hi-fi. And on a CD vinyl drop of the mono version of Mal Waldron's "Warm Canto," the unison piano, cello, and double-bass notes in the opening measures had realistically tactile note attacks—likewise Ron Carter's pizzicato cello solo, which was very moving, appropriately so.

Electric guitarist John Scofield, winner of multiple Grammy Awards, has a knack for staying a step ahead of musical trends. In hundreds of jazz settings, "Sco" and his signature Ibanez AS200 guitar and Fender Reverb amplifier have created a unique style and sound that have earned him a popularity beyond jazz's usual audience.