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Art Pepper Live at Ronnie Scott's

The Complete Art Pepper at Ronnie Scott's Club, London, June 1980, a 7-LP boxed set released by Pure Pleasure Records, is a total surprise and a sheer delight.

Art Pepper, who died in 1982 at the age of 56, was not only one of the great alto saxophonists of his era but a self-transformer to boot. In the early 1950s, he routinely ranked No. 2 in Downbeat polls (beat only by Charlie Parker), then vanished in the '60s (locked up in various prisons on drug charges), only to emerge in the mid-'70s with a totally different sound.

On his early albums, the best of which were recorded by…

How Often Do You Listen On Your Main System vs. Everything Else?

Seize the Rainbow

I ignored my own advice and did not attend Sunday’s Collect-i-Bowl record show at Brooklyn Bowl. (Robert Baird was there, though, and says it was a great and delicious time.) I did, however, attend Saturday’s Record Riot in Jersey City, sponsored in part by Steve Gritzan of Jersey City’s own vinyl speakeasy, Iris Records. Because I’ve been spending so much money on records lately, I told myself that I would not spend more than $20. Well, you know how it goes: $20 soon became $40, and so on.

But, whatever: I’m richer in vinyl.

I picked up unloved copies of Fred Frith’s wildly…

HDTracks + ABKCO Release Hi-Rez Downloads of The Rolling Stones

Courtesy of ABKCO Music & Records, Inc.

The tides of the digital audio industry are turning as hi-rez audio downloads are pushed further into the mainstream. On March 2, 2011, HDTracks welcome ABKCO's Remastered Series of the Rolling Stones to their catalog, available at 176kHz/24-bit and 88kHz/24-bit. Now available for download are FLAC files for The Rolling Stones, The Rolling Stones No. 2, 12 X 5, and Through the Past Darkly.

Teri Landi, archivist and engineer at ABKCO Music & Records details, "Many years of research went into locating the original mono and stereo…

Celebrate Dynamic Range Day on March 25th

Music producer and mastering engineer Ian Shepherd at Production Advice has created a holiday, and even the folks B&W, Shure, and console manufacturer Solid State Logic are celebrating. On March 25th, interested parties can join Shepherd in his commemoration of rich and sonically inviting recordings by participating in Dynamic Range Day. The message of the event is "Dynamic Music Sounds Better," and Shepherd hopes to spread the word by making people aware of the dangers of the Loudness Wars and encouraging dynamic recordings.

Part of the event is a sponsored competition, where…

Recording of March 1989: <I>Dark Intervals</I>

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…

The Fifth Element #64

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,…

The Fifth Element #64 Page 2

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…

The Fifth Element #64 Page 3

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…

The Fifth Element #64 Page 4

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…