Jason Victor Serinus reviewed Dynaudio's Focus 10 in Stereophile's February 2023 issue. He concluded that "designed as a 'complete wireless sound system,' the Focus 10 were the most musically satisfying one-stop playback solution he'd had the pleasure of hanging with." However, one aspect he wasn't able to audition was the loudspeaker's integration with Dirac Live room correction.
As I had some experience in…
It has been a year since my piece "On The Road Again: A Jazz Festival Journal From A Summer Of Plague And War" appeared, in the November 2022 issue of this magazine. It described three European jazz festivals I attended in July 2022.
In July 2023, I returned to Europe to attend two festivals. The COVID-19 plague and its fallout had significantly subsided. The war in Ukraine was still raging, but this time I didn't get near it. In 2022, I went to a festival in Romania, which borders Ukraine. In 2023, I only went to Italy.…
This year's festival provided further confirmation that the leading jazz scene outside the United States is Italy. Many of the best Italians were there: Enrico Rava. Paolo Fresu. Fabrizio Bosso. Gianluca Petrella. Flavio Boltro. Stefano di Battista. Enrico Morello. And that is before we get to the piano players. The greatest strength of the Italian jazz scene is pianists. The top four are Stefano Bollani, Enrico Pieranunzi, Danilo Rea, and Dado Moroni.
But one searches in vain for Italian names in the 71st DownBeat Critics Poll. The almost…
La Litanie Des Cimes, Woodlands (BMC)
Dan Kinzelman/Ghost Horse, Il Bene Comune (Hora)
Francesco Diodati Yellow Squeeds, Never The Same (Auand, Stereophile Recording Of The Month, May 2019)
Enrico Pieranunzi/Marc Johnson/Joey Baron, Live In Japan (Cam Jazz)
Danilo Rea, Doctor 3 (Jando)
Dado Moroni, There Is No Greater Love (Storyville)
Stefano Bollani, Stone In The Water (ECM)
Julian Oliver Mazzariello, Reflections (Foné)
A while back, I visited an audio store to give a presentation. Before the public arrived, I sat down with some veteran audio manufacturers who were contentedly listening to a system that…
Digital Playback: Among other discs, I ripped a reissue of Milt Jackson's Sunflower (LP, CTI/Pure Pleasure 6024) to both CD and DSD128 resolutions. If you needed more proof that CD resolution is not transparent to the source and that double DSD gets much closer, these two files would convince you: The CD-rez file sounded spatially flat and somewhat crunchy on top; the DSD was smoother, more spacious, more like the LP.
If you buy a Sony PS-HX500 to archive your LPs, you'll find its playback, recording, and editing functions relatively easy to use. On a Mac, the files show up in a…
Here's a real treat: piano trios by four outstanding Spanish composers—Enrique Fernández Arbós, Joaquín Turina, Gaspar Cassadó, and Mariano Perelló. All except Cassadó, a famed cellist born in 1897 who studied with Pablo Casals in Paris, composed during the same golden period as Granados, Falla, and Albéniz—the composers whose orchestral music graces Fritz…
The mix of early Motown, a pinch of Chic's guitar, dance synths, and lush orchestration made The Lexicon of Love a firecracker of an album in 1982. ABC was not simply another New Romantic band espousing conspicuous consumption on sun-kissed yachts. Their music reveled in pop, it was filled with puns, and yes it was fun, but it was also eloquent. Their sense of irony, perhaps epitomized by Martin Fry's gold lamé suit and…
John Scofield is, by broad consensus, one of the three or four most important guitarists in jazz. Unlike so many of today's jazz musicians, he has the humility to play songs written by others.
In the liner notes to this double album, he says that he was 13 when the Byrds's version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" was a hit. It has been in his musical…