Because speakers interact with the room in which they are placed—you know, sounds bounce off of walls and floors and get sucked up by furniture and stuff—paying attention to the placement of your speakers within that room can make a big difference in sound quality. With your speakers optimally positioned, your system will sound…
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You'd think that setting up a pair of loudspeakers would be a piece of cake: Stick 'em where they look good, and be done with it. It can be as simple as that, but to get the best sound from your speakers, you'll have to do a bit more work.
It’s been a year and a few months since I’ve seen Anat Cohen, the young Israeli-born jazz clarinetist, play live, and she’s grown still more assured and supple, her swing more insouciant, her tone more sheer and gorgeous. She and her quartet began the early set at the Village Vanguard last night with “Jitterbug Waltz” (as she did the previous time I saw her there) and breezed through it with breathtaking speed, but not just as some virtuosic show: there was brio, gusto, real delight in her playing, as she slid in and out of a slew of styles and rhythms—trad, bop, Latin, quasi-klezmer—seamless…
Speakers Corner Records, the German audiophile vinyl reissue label (distributed in the U.S. by Acoustic Sounds), has one of the more diverse jazz catalogues, drawn from a variety of golden-age labels (Verve, RCA, Impulse, Columbia, among others). Three new additions are worth mining:
Peggy Lee’s Black Coffee is a shiveringly sensuous album, recorded for Decca, first as an EP in 1953, then expanded to an LP in ’56. Capitol did the same with June Christy’s Something Cool, and the two albums have more in common than the fact that both singers were Hitchcock blonds who’d spent time fronting…
I should have known by the looks in their shining eyes. When people told me that I'd probably enjoy it, that it was probably a good idea for me to go, they were being coy. But never mind: No words could have prepared me for the enormity of the event, for the knee-weakening prospect of innumerable treasures. And so, on Saturday morning, when I decided to go to the WFMU Record Fair, I was entirely, woefully, indubitably unprepared. I am reminded of my first Consumer Electronics Show. You can't know what it's like until you've been. And only after it's over can you pretend to…
I found out about Patato & Totico all on my own, and completely by accident. It happened during the height of my salsa fixation, just after I completed my first Salsa Means Soul compilation. Searching the compact disc shelves at the Virgin Megastore for an album called Cuban Pearls, and specifically for a song called "Oriente" by Cheo Marquetti, I instead stumbled upon the Verve reissue of this 1967 work by famed congero Carlos "Patato" Valdes and vocalist Eugenio "Totico" Arango.
At the time, I knew very little about the two musicians and I knew nothing at all about the…
Jenny Scheinman is one of the liveliest, quirkiest jazz musicians out there, a violinist with folk roots, a kind of bluegrass cadence, and a deepening mastery of improvisational idiom. She’s playing at the Village Vanguard through this Sunday with Jason Moran (the best pianist on the scene), Greg Cohen (one of the two or three best bassists), and Rudy Royston (a drummer who’s new to me but he’s very good too). If you’re in the tri-State area, go see her.
At the late set last Tuesday, she played mainly her own compositions—lovely slow ballads and rousing up-tempo ditties, all teeming with…
Andrew Hill, the knotty avant-garde pianist, and Chico Hamilton, the boisterous polyrhythmic drummer, seem an unlikely pair at first (or second) glance. But they set off fascinating fireworks, and carved out sinuous jags of common ground, in a duet recording, Dreams Come True, just released on Joyous Shout!, an Indiana-based label that I’ve never heard of. (Its website seems to be a sort of shrine to Chico Hamilton merchandise.)
The session was recorded in 1993, and may have been considered too off-handed for public distribution, but this looseness—like a casual conversation—accounts for…
One of my favorite jazz bands, Ben Allison’s Medicine Wheel, is playing at the Jazz Standard Nov. 4. Allison is an enticing bassist and composer, agile and inventive, flitting from Herbie Nichols to film noir to raga, ska, funky blues, and straight-ahead jazz without showing a seam, loosening his wit, or abandoning the melody or the swing. The band is first-rate (regular readers will recognize most of them): Frank Kimbrough, piano; Jenny Scheinman, violin; Ted Nash and Michael Blake, reeds; and Michael Sarin, drums.
The problem, of course, is that it’s Election Night. What to do: listen…
For Halloween, I dressed up as myself: rigid and morose. My costume was a smash at all the parties. However, the Best Costume Award goes to SnowGhost Music's Greg McGrath. Greg dressed up as an MP3. He explained:
I'm wearing a knockoff costume that doesn't look nearly as good as my friend's costume and it's giving me a rash, but I got it for free!
Heh heh. Audio humor. I love it.
Rumor has it that our music editor, Robert Baird, donned the thick black eyeliner, bad tattoos, and beehive hairdo of a certain tragic pop star. We tried to get him into rehab, but…
She stands in the long and winding Election Day line, a wonder in her cream-colored cotton sweater, black tights, and two-inch heels. Her head is down in Milan Kundera, and somewhere in her mind she sings.
The song is Neil Young's "The Needle and The Damage Done."