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When I first met Josh Ray at a hi-fi show several years ago, I was impressed by his desire to bring high-end audio to a larger audience&#151an endeavor that I can easily appreciate. At the time, Josh sat atop the masthead of the forward-thinking audio review website, Sonic Flare. Along with Danny Kaey and a small cast of writers, Josh made Sonic Flare a fun and interesting web destination. But while SF’s reviews were consistently informative, I always wondered if Josh’s interests were more aligned with promoting the overall idea and allure of high-end audio.

Today, Danny Kaey has assumed full responsibility for Sonic Flare, while Josh Ray turns his attention to a new endeavor: Urban Fidelity, a loudspeaker company aimed at bringing hi-fi to a new generation of listeners. Josh sees an opportunity:

Joplin: Treemonisha
Anita Johnson, soprano; AnnMarie Sandy, mezzo-soprano; Chauncey Packer, Robert Mack, tenors; Edward Pleasant, high baritone; Darren Stokes, Frank Ward Jr., basses; others; Paragon Ragtime Orchestra and Singers, Rick Benjamin
New World 80720-2 (2 CDs). 2012. Judith Sherman, prod., eng. DDD. TT: 99:06
Performance ****
Sonics *****

The great ragtime composer Scott Joplin had grander ambitions than just the magnificent miniatures for piano he's famous for. When he died, in 1917, he had spent much of the previous 10 years polishing and campaigning for his full-length opera, Treemonisha, the piano-vocal score for which he had published in 1911. Joplin had studied classical composition and notation with a German scholar who had happened to settle in his hometown of Texarkana, Arkansas; lore has it that Julius Weiss gave young Joplin lessons in exchange for Mrs. Joplin's services as a laundress. Treemonisha is through-composed, with sophisticated harmonies clearly influenced by European teachings, but it also incorporates early-jazz beats, proto-blues sounds, odd syncopations, occasional Victorian-type ballads, African-American folk and pop music, and moments that recall field hollers and revival meetings—in short, all of the music of the Black experience in America is represented.

I was recently reunited with an old friend from high school. My best friend from high school, in fact. Our families got together, everyone got along, and as the dust of conversation settled toward the rug of companionable silence, talk turned to work. And when the inevitable happened, and my old friend and his wife—classical-music lovers both—asked how much a person had to spend these days in order to get a good music system, I answered their question with a question—a question that, crazily enough, just popped into my head...

Tuesday&#150Thursday, August 21–23, 7:30pm: In celebration of John Cage’s 100th birthday, The [kāg] ensemble will perform Kevin James’s 100 Waltzes for John Cage at the DiMenna Center, Mary Flagler Cary Hall (450 West 37th Street, New York).

Inspired by Cage’s 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs, for which a score was created by randomly selecting 147 locations on a New York City map, James’s work is said to answer the question, “What would Cage have done with the advanced technologies that have shaped our ever-expanding information age?”

I'd like to think he'd have thrown them out the window and made a score from their shattered bits and pieces. Kevin James, it seems, feels similarly:

Back when the CD was a pup, I used to hear people say, "I refuse to buy a CD player until they can record." Ha ha, I thought, smart-ass audiophile that I was, they're gonna wait for a long time—that's never gonna happen. I was half right—it has been a long time coming. But I was also, as my football coach used to insist, half-fast. "Never" has arrived.

I approached The xx’s self-titled debut with caution. The hype surrounding it was enough to turn me away. I remember talking about the record with Karen at Other Music. “It’s definitely one of those albums that polarizes people,” she said.

Soon, though, it became unavoidable. I might be able to hide from it at home, but I couldn’t escape it at work. By the middle of 2010, a hi-fi show wasn’t complete without The xx.

Lenny Abramov thought he found immortality in Eunice Park, the woman who gave him the will to live. He thought he found it in his job, where he sweat endlessly soaking through his acrylic shirts while mindlessly serving Joshie, a back-stabbing “friend”. Eunice would leave him too. In fact, the only true happiness Abramov ever found and returned to were the sounds of his mother and father’s native Russian tongue, their coddling words and thick, laborious accents. In their speech, he could reconnect to the compassion they shared, the basketball they played, and his basement bedroom. Abramov’s parents were the only thing he had, until they died. He was left with bells “tolling, deep and sonorous and thoroughly Russian.” Lenny never chose his parents. He never chose their boundless affection. It was the sound of bells at their deathbeds that reminded him he was loved.