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Maria Schneider and her 18-piece orchestra play their annual Thanksgiving week gig at the Jazz Standard starting Nov. 25 and continuing till the 30th (except for Thursday, when the club is closed), and if you’re in the tri-State area, you should reserve seats now, as her shows usually sell out. Regular readers of this blog may recall my previous ravings about Schneider. A former student of Gil Evans and Bob Bookmeyer, she is the most sumptuous jazz arranger on the jazz scene today, having absorbed her teachers’ penchant for lush stacked harmonies and added a flair for Latin rhythms, a…
Saturday
The very lazy day started off with me not taking a shower. Following that, I played another interesting record: Gegenwind by Pirchner-Pepl-Jazzwio from the Mood Records label. What initially attracted me to the album was Harry Pepl's Ovation guitar on the cover, and I always have to support my fiberglass-guitar-bodied homies.
Gegenwind really showcased the ability of my system, most notably in terms of soundstage and realism. Werner Pichner's vibraphone moved from right to left across the right-center of the soundstage, and I sensed the true softness of the mallets,…
It's not all-audio all-the-time in the Stereophile forums. Every once in awhile, a fellow likes to turn down the stereo and reach for The Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, The Economist, Sports Illustrated, King, whatever.
We are large. We contain multitudes.
Therefore, we've created a new forum where we can gather to discuss any topic that might be on our minds. The Open Bar is where we'll toss around ideas on politics, entertainment, science and nature, sports and leisure, arts and literature, board games, the weather, or whatever.
Conversations may become…
Remember what I wrote last week about my dream listening room? Some nice furniture, DeVore Fidelity loudspeakers, Shindo amplifiers, walls lined in vinyl LPs, all that?
Well, shit, Matthew Rotunda of Pitch Perfect Audio went and beat me to it. The team at Pitch Perfect Audio will be celebrating their third anniversary on January 1, 2009, and they'll be doing it in style. The new showroom looks pretty damn glorious. If I lived in San Francisco, I might just stop by on my way home from the office and roll all around the rug and tangle myself up in my favorite LPs, like the place…
My favorite audio product of 2008 isn't precisely an audio product—it's a home theater in a box. I'm referring to Polk's lovely SurroundBar 360, which sells for $1200 and gives you a low-profile 48" "sound bar" and a base station, which includes an optical disc player, DSP processing, and an AM/FM tuner. The base station, of course, contains all the amplification the sound bar requires. Also included is a special umbilical to connect the two pieces—and, in a savvy little detail that tells you a great deal about how much thought has gone into the SurroundBar 360, the connectors on that cable…
Perhaps the most interesting thing on satellite radio has been Bob Dylan’s Theme Time radio show on XM, where he uses big themes like “baseball” or “eyes,” and builds shows around music that somehow connects to the theme. The idea for this show, which is worth listening to if only for Dylan’s raspy–voiced patter, may have come from a previous Forties–era radio program hosted by one of Dylan’s heroes, Woody Guthrie.
Besides the music which is extraordinary, the show is filled with great details. Ellen Barkin as the opening announcer is um...well, forgive me, but the woman has…
My heart is not broken. It is collapsed like the sun into the frozen Meadowlands. Sometimes, alone in bed at night, I get this awful, screaming pain in the side of my bony chest, in that empty space where I imagine you to be. It's not often that I do this, sit here. Listen to the same sad songs over and over again, sing along, cry, think of how these words were written for us. It's probably not a good habit to be getting into, but it seems I just can't stop. It's been more than two weeks now, and it isn't wearing off. Twelve songs, 40 minutes, over and over again. I can't stop…
Selfdivider directed us to this excellent and encouraging article in the New York Times.
Melissa found a bunch of abandoned LPs, so her boyfriend Dave bought her a Rega P1. (Good move, Dave!) It wasn't long before Melissa fell in love with the vinyl experience. (I know how that goes.)
Now she holds listening parties in her Brooklyn apartment, introducing friends to the rich sound of vinyl. "There is something I like about the process of listening that way," she said. "Having to listen to it in the order the musicians intended, and turning it over. There is…
Wayne Shorter marked his 75th birthday with a concert at Carnegie Hall last night. The show began with the Imani Winds, a spirited quintet of woodwinds and French horn, briskly traversing Villa-Lobos’ “Quintette en Forme de Choros,” followed by the world premiere of Shorter’s own classicial composition, “Terra Incognito.” (Let’s just say Gunther Schuller has nothing to worry about.) Exit Imani Winds, enter the Wayne Shorter Quartet, sparking lusty applause but not much after. Shorter’s band was, as usual, great. Danilo Perez, piano; John Patitucci, bass; Brian Blade, drums—not many rhythm…
In a way, I started writing that Ryan Adams piece at the moment I dropped the needle on the record—around two, or maybe closer to three weeks ago now. Words, however, weren't typed onto this computer screen until last Monday. Normally, I don't spend so much time on a blog entry. For better or worse, these entries usually end on the day they begin, but other things—work, Thanksgiving, life—kept getting in the way of my completion of the Cardinology piece. I think I could have finished it all in one day had I had the opportunity, and I also think it could have…