The major record labels were riding high, then hit a major speedbump due to the Internet, high pricing, and mediocre music. What's next? What do you think will happen to the major record labels?
A world-renowned musician had scheduled an appearance as guest soloist with the string quartet in residence at a certain university. When he arrived he noticed a pair of microphones arrayed over the small stage and, following the wires, located a college student backstage next to a tape recorder and a pair of headphones.
Whenever I’m at Tunes in Hoboken, getting my fingers all dirty on the vinyl LPs, I stop and stare at this one album, John Prine’s <i>Sweet Revenge</i>, and I wonder what it’s all about. Prine looks pretty bad-ass there in his convertible, decked out in so much blue denim, dark aviators over his eyes, a cigarette at his lips, the wind in his hair, legs crossed and flung out over the passenger side window like he’s seriously satisfied, like he really doesn’t care.
<i>Photo: Sebastian Mlynarski</i>
Three years after Dynaudio released its highly coveted 30th Anniversary Sapphire loudspeaker in a limited run of 2000 units, the final pair will be sold online by Danish auctioneer <A HREF="http://www.lauritz.com">Lauritz</A>. All proceeds from the auction, which begins Wednesday, May 12, and ends at 2pm MEST on Saturday, May 22, will benefit Doctors Without Borders.
On Saturday night, in New York City, upstairs in Manhattan’s 54th Street Yamaha piano studios, which by the way is very close to that other keyboard shrine, Steinway Hall, <I>Stereophile</I>’s own contributing editor Bob Reina and his group, Attention Screen recorded their third live album for Stereophile Records, a label owned and run by editor in chief/sound engineer John Atkinson, our fearless leader. Just so there is no confusion, I mean that last term as an endearing salute rather than in the sense of Rocky & Bullwinkle’s Germanesque dictator of Pottsylvania.
I was directed to this video via the <a href="http://twitter.com/stereophilemag"><i>Stereophile</i> Twitter page</a>, in a tweet from <a href="http://blog.bowers-wilkins.com/sound/formats/to-have-and-to-hold-vinyl-… & Wilkins</a>, who’d seen it first at <a href="http://www.audiophilia.com/wp/?p=4383">Audiophilia</a>. Moments after I’d watched the video, <i>Stereophile</i> contributor Jim Austin also sent me the link.
Balanced performance isn't the be-all and end-all of product design. A person can listen to a product which balances the highs with the lows, detail with forgiveness, delicacy with dynamics, and still feel unmoved. Such a product might sound "proper," but it won't produce the illusion of a live performance. It takes a special window or two on reality to convince you you're listening to live music. Such a loudspeaker may have other deficiencies which keep it from being a universally appealing product, but it keeps reminding you of the live experience. It may appeal only to a small number of audiophiles, but their experience may well be more intense.
And on Saturday, April 24th, Attention Screen performed at Yamaha’s Artist Services concert hall. The performance was recorded by John Atkinson for a future Stereophile CD, the band’s third, scheduled to be released at the 2010 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in October. It was an excellent night of music. Check out the images in <a href="http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/2232/size/bi… Gallery</a>.
There's a fantastic new two-SACD/CD set of a demonstration-quality live recording of a rather obscure work you really should get to know, not only for its own merits, but also for what I believe is its underappreciated but major influence on music and on popular culture. The piece is by 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg, but trust me—it's more than "listenable." It (or, at least, the music on the first disc) is beyond engaging; it is compelling—a revelation, even. The work is <I>Gurrelieder</I> (Songs of Gurre), Gurre being a castle in medieval Denmark that was the setting of a real-life doomed love triangle, the story of which has since loomed large in the moodily brooding artistic consciousness of Danes. The 19th-century Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen wrote a collection of poems based on medieval legends, including this one, and a German translation by Robert Franz Arnold provided Schoenberg's dramatic texts.