LATEST ADDITIONS

Jaki Byard’s <I>Sunshine of My Soul</I> (High Note) has come to my attention a bit late, otherwise it would have made my Top 10 list at the end of last year. Yet another long-lost concert-tape dug out of the vaults, it takes us to San Francisco’s Keystone Korner in June 1978, where Byard is flying barrel-rolls solo. Byard—who died in 1999 at 77, gunned down on his doorstep for still-unknown reasons—was a pianist both virtuosic and rowdy. His left hand is rock-solid, his right hand fleet with fury. Imagine Willie “The Lion” Smith pressure-cooked by Mingus (Byard played in Mingus’ band through most of the ‘60s), and you get some idea. He was a teacher to Jason Moran and Fred Hersch, two of today’s most versatile jazz pianists, and you can hear much of his influence in their work as well, especially Moran when he cruises through stride licks.

You thought the only new articles about CDs you'd be reading would be about further declines in sales? Well, it turns out that <A HREF="http://www.arkivmusic.com">ArkivMusic</A&gt;, the country's leading website for new and formerly out-of-print classical recordings, posted, um, record sales last year.

Longtime <I>Stereophile</I> reader (and EFF senior staff attorney) Fred von Lohmann sent us a message pointing us to rumors that iPod Classics running v1.1 firmware were outputting DC through both their dock connection and headphone jack. He included a <A REF="http://ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/ipod-classic-11-line-out-vol…; to iLounge.com, which bills itself as "an independent provider of information about Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod and iPhone digital media players, accessories, and related software."

It was a hot, humid, New York City evening in early August, and I was thankful to be sitting in the air-conditioned dark of Avery Fisher Hall, up in the Second Tier, for a Mostly Mozart concert. Listening to cello soloist Alisa Weilerstein in Osvaldo Golijov's hypnotic Azul, I was suddenly jolted by an explosive mix of primitive cello sonorities, accordion, and staccato riffs on ethnic percussion instruments. My thoughts turned to the importance in music of both power and delicacy, and of how Bryston Ltd.'s 28B-SST, a 1000W monoblock power amplifier, was designed to address both.

"We've tried making it more powerful. When I was away on holiday, some of our people cooked up a more powerful version and presented it to me on my return. It sounded awful."

Audio Research, one of the companies that created the Silver Age of American high-end audio 38 years ago, was acquired by Italian private equity firm Quadrivio SGR on January 25. Quadrivio, which acquired Sonus Faber in 2007, intends to keep Audio Research's current management team in place.

What’s the point of having a blog if you can’t be self-indulgent now and then? So allow me to plug my new book, <I>Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power</I> (Wiley & Sons). As the subtitle may suggest, it is not a biography of the Monkees but rather a journalistic dissection of <I>why</I> the United States’ global adventures and image have gone to hell in recent years. Some of you may know that I write a twice-weekly column in <I>Slate</I> about such matters. My book is <I>not</I> a compilation of my columns; it’s all new stuff. The official pub date is February 4, but it’s already in stock in many bookstores and on amazon.