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Register to win one of eight pairs of Phiaton PS 500 Primal Series Headphones (MSRP $299) Stereophile is giving away.

According to Phiaton, The PS 500 Primal Series Headphones offer listeners "a soaring level of concert-hall sound quality, unmatched performance, and a high level of comfort. Phiaton Primal Series headphones are designed for those who appreciate the classic yet somewhat exotic look and feel of supple leather and leather-grade trim."

[This sweepstakes is now closed.]

John Vanderslice’s seventh studio album, White Wilderness, marked by the enchanting, fluid maneuvers of the Magik*Magik Orchestra, was released last Tuesday. The entire album&#151nine twisting, coiling songs, spanning 31 minutes&#151was recorded in just three days, but sounds as purposeful and carefully conceived as a special gift.

Meanwhile, Vanderslice has another gift up his sleeve:

Yes We Can is the most jolting, swinging, all-round best album by the World Saxophone Quartet in nearly 20 years.

WSQ, which was formed in 1977, still has at its core two of the founding members, David Murray on tenor sax and Hamiett Bluiett on baritone. The alto parts, which have shifted over the decades, are taken up here by Kidd Jordan and James Carter (the latter also on soprano at times). They’re all playing at peak power.

In its original guise, with Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake on altos, WSQ was the signature jazz band of the 1980s, the spearhead of a spontaneous “neo-classical” movement (as critic Gary Giddins dubbed it), which combined the avant-garde’s passionate expressionism with the wit, grace and beauty of myriad traditional forms.

Much of this movement was captured on the Italian Black Saint label, as were the quartet’s seminal albums (especially Revue, W.S.Q., and Live at Brooklyn Academy of Music), though their most voluptuous work, the 1986 Plays Ellington, appeared on Nonesuch.

Hemphill, a master of stretched harmony, was the band’s driving force, and his departure. . .

Canadian pianist Robert Silverman, whose artistry has made him an audiophile legend, is set to continue his complete Beethoven Sonata Cycle Series in San Jose, CA. The four remaining concerts are scheduled for February 3 and 10 and April 7 and 14 in the excellent acoustic of San Jose's Le Petit Trianon Theatre. All proceeds from the performances will benefit the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford.

Producer of the series, Michael Silver of Audio High in Mountain View, CA, has retained Marc Wilsher to make high-resolution digital recordings of the entire series. Judging from an unedited hi-res master of the first movement of Beethoven's "Waldstein" sonata, the clarity and truthfulness of Silverman's sound in Le Petit Trianon are first-class.

The recordings could be as revelatory as the recordings that John Atkinson and Ray Kimber have and continued to make of Silverman performing other repertoire. Stereophile will release a new recording of Brahms' Handel Variations and Schumann's Symphonic Études later this year, and IsoMike has recently released a 7-CD set of Silverman performing all the Mozart piano sonatas. (JA's photo shows Robert performing a Mozart sonata at the 2010 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest.)

In November 2009, I took part in an intriguing comparison between live and recorded sound. I first recorded a live piano recital in 24-bit/96kHz digital, then allowed the audience to immediately hear the recording in the same room. (See my February 2010 thoughts on the comparison here.) For playback, I used two of the mono Esoteric D-01VU D/A converters locked to the ultra-high-precision Esoteric G-0Rb "atomic" master clock. I was very impressed by the sound of this cost-no-object digital system, so when I visited the Japanese company's room at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show and saw their new, relatively affordable D-07 D/A processor ($4800), I asked for a review sample.

Ten thousand hours. According to Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become truly exceptional in your field. For any endeavor, Gladwell contends, what will get you to Carnegie Hall isn't inborn talent but practice, practice, practice.

At the start of my teaching career, I discovered that it was more difficult to maintain order in a sixth-grade classroom early in the day than at any other time. First thing in the morning the kids were noisy and aimless, and banging my open palm on the chalkboard for their attention worked only once. So I gave my students that which most children crave, consciously or un-: a simple, clear explanation of what I expected of them.

What I expected of them—in the short term, at least—was this: They were required to answer three new questions, written for their benefit on that still-vibrating chalkboard, at the beginning of each and every school day. If the children didn't hand in their answers before the first-period classes began, I would not accept their homework from the night before, thus earning them a score of nothing. On the other hand, a good record of correct or at least entertaining answers to those morning questions would, I promised, be used to nudge upward any borderline report-card grade at the end of each quarter.