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Sonny's Crib, by Sonny Clark, one of the most tragic and still-underrated pianists in jazz, is one of the greatest blowing sessions on a label—Blue Note—that specialized in blowing sessions, especially in the mid-to-late '50s, when this was laid down.

September 1, 1957 was the recording date, and that's not a gratuitous factoid. First, 1957 marked a pinnacle in Clark's brief career; he recorded 18 albums that year, most of them Blue Notes, as either leader or sideman. (He would die from a heroin overdose in 1963, at the age of 31, and the only surprise was…

Branford Marsalis: Random Abstract
Branford Marsalis, saxes; Kenny Kirkland, piano; Delbert Felix, bass; Lewis Nash, drums…

Jeff Watts is simply remarkable. I defy anyone to hear…

When John Adams was working on his Chamber Symphony (1992), he became aware that his son Sam was in the next room watching old American cartoons, presumably those by Warner Bros. that used music by the great Raymond Scott. Hyperkinetic borrowings from Scott's…

"What local retailer?" was this reader's response. The nearest audio retailer was 200 miles from where he lived, and even that retailer had a very limited selection of products to demonstrate.

The scarcity of…

“Oh,…

I was talking last winter to Musical Fidelity's Antony Michaelson, who had been enthusing about his forthcoming stereo amplifier, the AMS100. It would be physically enormous—almost a yard deep—and commensurately heavy at 220 lbs. Despite its bulk, its maximum rated output would be just 100Wpc into 8 ohms. It would also be expensive, at $19,999. And to cock a snoot at environmentalists and their concerns, the AMS100's output stage would be biased into class-A up to its rated 8 ohm power, meaning that, even when not playing music, it will draw…

Description: Solid-state, bridged, two-channel power amplifier with class-A output stage and switchable balanced and unbalanced inputs. Rated output: 100Wpc into 8 ohms (20dBW), 200W into 4 ohms (20dBW). Peak output voltage: 80V p–p. Peak output current: 200A p–p. Frequency response: 10Hz–40kHz, +0/–0.4dB. Input sensitivity: 650mV for 100W into 8 ohms. Input impedance: 50k ohms, balanced and unbalanced. Damping factor: 200, equivalent to an output impedance of 0.04 ohm. THD+noise: <0.005% unweighted. Signal/noise: >110dB, A-weighted, ref. maximum power.…

Digital Sources: Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP & DX-5 universal players; Apple G4 Mac mini running OS10.5.8, iTunes 10, Pure Music 1.80; Shuttle PC with Lynx AES16 and dual-core AMD Athlon processor running Windows 7, Foobar 2000, Adobe Audition 3.0; dCS Debussy, Benchmark DAC1, Logitech Transporter D/A converters; Halide S/PDIF Bridge, Musical Fidelity V-Link USB-S/PDIF converters.
Preamplifiers: Simaudio Moon Evolution P-8, Ayre Acoustics K-5xeMP.
Power Amplifiers: Classé CT-M600, MBL Reference 9007 monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: Audience Clairaudient…