LATEST ADDITIONS

The Beeb is canceling <I>Top of the Pops</I>. Not that I ever watched it, but it's one of those things like the Grand Canyon that always seemed like it was eternal.

Friends like John Marks actually send me stuff like this John Derbyshire <I>National Review</I> book review of Nicholas Wade's <I>Before the Dawn</I>. Derbyshire's essay is argumentative and intriguing&mdash;the very qualities that Wade seems to have mastered in his book.

On his website, Neil Gaiman pulls off the difficult accomplishment of making me want to read Alan Moore's <I>Lost Girls</I> in a longer version of an essay published in <I>Publisher's Weekly</I>.

IBM has announced a "philantropic cultural heritage initiative" that will allow folks to virtually tour the 800-building Forbidden City complex using immersive cell-chip technology developed for gaming.

<I>Mark Lowery's Exciting World of Chess</I> reproduces two of the immortal chess games of all time: the 1851 "Immortal Game" between Anderssen and Kieseritzky and the 1852 Anerssen-Dufresne "Evergreen" game. The best part, if you struggle with chess notation, Lowery has animated the games so you can watch them unfold&mdash;at your speed.

Some things have led us to consider what we want &#151; exactly, more or less, I suppose &#151; from music. Feel free to substitute "the band," or "art," or even "life," for music. That is:

I had a nice chat recently with Mark Berry, publicist for classical music’s Naxos label. Naxos, for those unfamiliar, is a label with one hell of a back story.

<B>Hansen Audio:</B> Canadian loudspeaker manufacturer Hansen Audio, best known for "high-end luxury lifestyle speakers," has named Wes Bender senior director of US sales and marketing.

When I <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/news/051506nht/">visited</A&gt; NHT's manufacturing facility in early May, I was struck by a comment managing director Chris Byrne made when describing NHT's <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1105nht/">Xd loudspeaker</A>, which employs sophisticated digital signal processing (DSP) for its crossovers and equalization functions. "You do realize that we could have never incorporated such complex slopes in a physical crossover," Byrne proselytized.

Classical music in general, and audiophile label Telarc in particular, scored big in this year's annual Outmusic Awards. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici, whose music has recently found an ardent champion in conductor Robert Spano, won Outstanding New Recording: Instrumental for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's Telarc recording of <I>Paul Revere's Ride</I>. Telarc veteran and Grammy Award-winning producer Thomas C. Moore, who assisted in the recording, received the Outstanding Producer award. In addition, soprano Melissa Fogarty received Outstanding New Recording: Debut Female for <I>Handel: Scorned & Betrayed</I> (Albany Records).