KEITH JARRETT: Dark Intervals
Keith Jarrett, piano
ECM 1379 (837 342-1, LP; -2, CD). Kimio Oikawa, eng.; Manfred Eicher, prod. DDA/DDD. TT: 58:22
After a five-year hiatus in which he explored jazz standards, classical music, the clavichord, and the unclassifiable Spirits, Keith Jarrett has returned, however briefly, to the form that gained him his widest reputation: solo piano improvisations. But with a difference—only a single LP this time (instead of two, three, or ten), that LP composed of eight short sections, each with a title. This is a far cry from unbroken piano improvs…
But first some new music. In his excellent liner notes for Polyphonic Dialogues, his new disc of music by Dmitri Shostakovich and Rodion Shchedrin (SACD/CD, 2L 2L63), pianist Joachim Kwetzinsky recounts two exchanges between the composers. The first took place in 1965, when both were vacationing in Armenia. Shostakovich asked Shchedrin the Desert Island Score question: Were Shchedrin to be exiled to a deserted island and could bring only one score with him, which would it be? Shchedrin's answer was prompt: J.S. Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge.
When Shchedrin then turned the question on him,…
I have a lot of ground to cover, and so I have space to give only a brief but equally enthusiastic recommendation of tenor Mark Padmore and fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout's new Dichterliebe: settings of Heinrich Heine verses by Robert Schumann and Franz Paul Lachner (CD, Harmonia Mundi HMU 907521, footnote 1). This one's a no-brainer—if you're familiar with Padmore's singing, you'll want this disc; if you're not, you should hear it. If you know Schumann's Liederkreis and Dichterliebe, you'll want this disc; if you don't, you should hear it. Amazon.com has sound bites up. Listen to the…
Vivid states that the B-1 is 89dB sensitive, and has a frequency response of 39Hz–41kHz, ±2dB, and 35Hz–44kHz, ±6dB. They also claim second- and third-order harmonic distortion of less than 0.5% over its frequency range, and a maximum power handling of 300W.
The pair I received, in rolling flight cases, were painted in Graphite (Dark Gray Metallic), and had been the demo pair for Vivid importer On a Higher Note at the 2010 SSI Show in Montreal, after which they'd been sent to another reviewer. Just as I'd noted last October some apparent damage, benignly repaired, to a V-1.5's midrange…
Similarly, the reverb in the main vocal in Jackson Browne's "Late for the Sky," (CD, Elektra Asylum 2-1017), was much more apparent, and the background vocals were better defined, especially in space. Pretty much the same thing happened with Steve Hoffman's remastering of Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark (gold CD, DCC Compact Classics GZS 1025)—Mitchell's acoustical isolation from the rest of the band was apparent as never before. The B-1 is so much more capable a speaker than the V-1.5 that, if you can afford it, the B-1 actually represents better value for money.
The 2 Johns Do a Big…
Sidebar 1: Contacts
Vivid Audio Ltd., 3 Marlborough Rd., Lancing Business Park, Lancing, West Sussex BN15 8UF, England, UK. Vivid Audio (PTY) Ltd., PO Box 343, Kloof 3640, Kwazulu Natal, South Africa. Tel: (27) 31-705-4168. US distributor: On a Higher Note LLC, PO Box 698, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92693. Tel: (949) 488-3004. Fax: (949) 488-3284. Web: www.onahighernote.com.
Sidebar 2: Vivid Measurements
As John Marks mentions, as I was visiting him to both check out his new listening room and listen to the two pairs of Vivid loudspeakers, I took the opportunity to measure each speaker's spatially averaged response in his room. I perform this measurement by averaging twenty 1/6-octave–smoothed responses taken, for each speaker individually, in a rectangular grid measuring 36" by 18" and centered on the positions of the listener's ears in the listening chair. (I used an Earthworks QTC-40 omni microphone and a Metric Halo ULN-2 FireWire audio interface, in…
Now I remember why I'm no longer a car enthusiast. I haven't got the time.
In my youth, when I wasn't driving my beloved car, I was washing it. Polishing it. Waxing its engine compartment. Spraying Armor All on its hoses and bushings. Cleaning its interior vents with cotton swabs, and its shifter boot with Lexol. I did all of my own maintenance and some of my own repairs—those of the latter that didn't require specialized tools, at least—and I kept the car covered with a car cover I bought from a mail-order house, along with lots of other crazy junk.
But after my daughter was born…
That grease bearing is an astoundingly well-made thing in its own right: an alloy well, enduringly hammertoned, fitted with two phosphor-bronze sleeves designed to accommodate an astoundingly well-machined spindle about 0.5" in diameter and 5" long. The grease fitting itself—a technical detail of no small nostalgia for those of us who have owned automobiles made before the days of "permanently lubricated" ball joints—sports an extra-long cap intended to be tightened gradually, over time, thus squishing ever more grease into the bearing, as needed. Interestingly, the flat bottom of the…
Now then: My Garrard 301 came mounted on a large, boxy plinth, the top surface of which is spring-suspended, which is how G.R. Koonce bought it back in 1958; for that reason, and because a number of photos on the Internet show Garrard 301s in identical plinths, I assume that this was made either by Garrard in England or was commissioned by one of the company's US distributors. Because I intend to make my own plinth later on, and because I'm not presently interested in the Shure M232 Transcription Tone Arm that accompanied my 301, I decided to begin by concentrating on the motor unit only.…
