I didn’t even know there was an Ottawa in Ohio. But there is. Turns out to be a village in the northwest section of the state, about 155 miles west of Cleveland. The Mayor is Kenneth A. Maag, and in 2009, the village celebrated its 175th anniversary. Can you believe that? The Village of Ottawa has a population of 4,367, and among them are at least two music lovers.
New York City’s Other Music is Light In The Attic’s “Record Store of the Week.” Check out the interview with OM’s co-owner, Josh Madell.
In “Old-School Hi-Fi in Search of the New New Thing,” Hal Espen visits the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest and ponders the inherent dilemma of hi-fi.
How can a decidedly old-fashioned hobby move forward in an increasingly newfangled world?
Outside the listening rooms, the story of this year's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest traced the mood-swings and anxieties that buoy and beset the retro-futuristic world of high-end audio.
<i>Don Garber's Fi 46 monoblocks, in "test mule" form.</i>
Does spending more money on audio equipment get you better sound? Some audiophiles assume that anything that costs more must be betterand that if it's relatively inexpensive, then it can't be any good. Others hold the opposite view: expensive components can't possibly be worth their prices, and those who manufacture themand audio journalists who report on themmust be charlatans.
Henry Threadgill should be better known than he is. A topnotch musician on alto sax and flute, one of the more innovative composers in jazz, a veteran of the Chicago avant-garde and a revivalist of ragtime improvisational styles (the two are not so contradictory, as he was the first to demonstrate), Threadgill started out on small labels, briefly landed contracts at RCA Novus and Columbia during their brief flirtations with experimentalists (in the late ‘80s and mid ‘90s, respectively), then went back to the indies—all the while retaining, even advancing, his spirit of adventure and his restless but disciplined innovation.
<B>Beethoven: <I>Piano Concertos 1–5</I></B><BR>
Paul Lewis, piano; Jirí Belohlávek, BBC Symphony Orchestra<BR>
Harmonia Mundi 902053.55 (3 CDs). 2010. Martin Sauer, prod.; Philip Knop, eng. DDD. TT: 2:55:42<BR>
Performance *****<BR>
Sonics *****
"Is it live or is it recorded?"