LATEST ADDITIONS

The April 2009 issue of <i>Stereophile</i> is now on newsstands. The April issue is always a bear, but this one was a hungry, 15 foot tall, 2 ton Kodiak. It's kind of a miracle that it even exists.

It’s rare that a live concert captures the mind-bending joy of mainstream post-War jazz. (Recitals of the bebop repertory tend toward the worshipfully literal, like museum pieces.) But just such a rare experience was had last night at Smalls, the convivial (and, yes, small) jazz club in the West Village, where pianist Ethan Iverson played standards with a trio that featured Albert “Tootie” Heath on drums.

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I’ve just glommed on to TV on the Radio, and let me tell all those who are as out-of-it as I am, when it comes to contemporary rock, the band is really very good. I first heard them play on Steven Colbert’s show, then bought their latest CD <I>Dear Science</I> (which the <I>Village Voice</I> and others touted as the best album of 2008), and I’ve listened to it since at least a dozen times. As I <A HREF=''http://blog.stereophile.com/fredkaplan/012208jazz/''>wrote</A&gt; a little over a year ago about Radiohead, after I first heard <I>In Rainbows</I>, it’s as harmonically and rhythmically sophisticated as just about any work of modern jazz—which is not to say that it’s <I>like</I> jazz but rather that, on any musical level, the purest jazz purist has no grounds for looking down on it.

When I taught a recording engineering program at a California college, one of my first responsibilities to new students was to clarify for them what recording engineering was <I>really</I> about. Many of them entered the program with the impression that recording was nonstop glamor, with a significant part of the job devoted to partying with their favorite rock bands. It was my job to tell them the bad news: Recording was more about lying on your back underneath a recording console on a dirty studio floor with hot solder dripping on your face.

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