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A combination of cool jazz and what's today referred to as "space-age bachelor pad music," this Mancini outing features top West Coast musicians including Art Pepper on clarinet (!), Pete Candoli, Shelly Manne, Larry Bunker, and "Johnny" Williams (the John Williams of Star Wars fame) on piano and harpsichord. The harpsichord gimmick wears a bit thin, but Mancini's arrangements remain otherwise fresh and inventive. The opener, Bobby Timmons's "Moanin'," will…

This is Lowell Davidson's only recording, and what a beautiful piece of music it is. Davidson studied pianoforte at age 4, composition at 8, harmony at 12, organ and then piano at 15. He graduated from Harvard on a full scholarship with a degree in biochemistry. Davidson's playing is not familiar in a directly referential…

GARY WILSON: Electric Endicott
Western Vinyl WEST079 (CD). 2010. Gary Wilson, prod., eng. DDD. TT: 32:08

These latest releases by Lady Gaga and Gary Wilson have so much in common. Both are perfectionist performance artists whose onstage personae leave some enchanted and others aghast. Both are musical talents who blend disparate musical genres, acoustic and electronic textures, and…

We reported last November that Thiel Audio Products, the Kentucky-based speaker manufacturer founded by Kathy Gornik and the late Jim Thiel, had been had been acquired by a private equity firm based in Nashville, TN, and that Gornik was no longer with the company. At the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, held January 8–11 in Las Vegas, the Thiel display at the Sands Convention Center was packed. I met up with Thiel's new CEO, 55-year old Bill Thomas, and asked him what had led him and…

I certainly am no stranger to the idea that a "student" orchestra can turn in a performance undeniably superior to those offered by many "professional" orchestras. After all, my favorite commercial recording of Mahler's Symphony 6 is by the orchestra of The Manhattan School of Music, conducted by Glenn Cortese.

But what a special treat it was to hear Daniel Barenboim conduct the orchestra he founded with Edward Said in Weimar in 1999, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, in a program of Beethoven's Second and Third ("Eroica") Symphonies…

Chris Hubbard of Murphy, NC won a fat stack of Beach Boys remaster CDs as well as a Beach Boys hat, poster, and other random swag, and he received it all on his birthday!

A huge thanks to this music lover who will now have plenty of Beach…

Here's Steve Gibson of Killen, Alabama. For some reason, there seems to be a reserve of music lovers in the North Alabama/Tennessee border, many of which are active members here on Stereophile.com. Maybe it's the proximity to Muscle Shoals. Maybe 'Bama raises the best ears. Or maybe its the cheese grits.

Steve, or sgibson389 as he's known on Stereophile.com, made a couple resolutions for this New Year: to single task more year and to just "listen" to music. You and me both brother. Luckily, he just won an AudioQuest Dragonfly…

Trumpeter Clifford Brown's death in a car accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on June 26, 1956—his second wedding anniversary—set up an eternity of unanswerables headed by the belief, among many, that had Brownie lived,…

When the first of two groups of BAAS members arrived, I played three complex selections that challenge a system far more than does the standard choice of…

On Wednesday January 29th, 2013, Innovative Audio Video Showrooms hosted the NYC premier of the Lamm LP1 Signature phono preamplifier ($32,790).

After a cornucopia of Diet Coke, kosher sandwiches, and vegan quesadillas, listeners were invited to three listening rooms hosting three Lamm inspired systems: The Signature Room, the Reference Hybrid Room, and the Vacuum Tube Room.

I first popped into the Signature Room where Vladmir Lamm presented his new LP1 Signature phono preamplifier. The LP1…