The exhibit, designed to celebrate "pioneering designs shaping our music experiences," was the creation of two visionaries: Museum…
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From May 4 through August 18, 2024, the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art (SFMOMA) staged the largest multisensory installation cum performance art exhibition in its history. Entitled Art Of Noise, the multi-room show, which occupied 14,000ft2 on the museum's seventh floor, drew an estimated 140,000 visitors, boosting museum attendance by over 33% from the same period in 2023. Even accounting for postpandemic attendance declines, that's an impressive figure.
The genesis of Art Of Noise
"Music has always been a passion of mine," Becker told me weeks before I journeyed to San Francisco. "I'm motivated by music that can be transformative. That led me to want to provide a transformative listening space. I am also a curator of architecture and design. Pulling out the connection between design and music was a natural evolution of my interests."
Close to 18 years ago, when Becker began working at the museum, he learned of its "incredible" collection of nearly 500 psychedelic rock posters that was gifted to SFMOMA by Jim Chanin in the…
Jimi Hendrix: Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision
Experience Hendrix/Legacy Recordings (LP). 2024.
Janie Hendrix, Eddie Kramer, John McDermott, prods.; Eddie Kramer, Chandler Harrod, engs.
Performance *****
Sonics *****
Experience Hendrix/Legacy Recordings (LP). 2024.
Janie Hendrix, Eddie Kramer, John McDermott, prods.; Eddie Kramer, Chandler Harrod, engs.
Performance *****
Sonics *****
The new-look Jimi Hendrix Experience (Billy Cox on bass; Mitch Mitchell on drums) recorded a remarkable amount of material between June and August of 1970 at Electric Lady Studios in New York City. The sessions were intended to become First Rays of the New Rising Sun, a double album follow-up to 1968's Electric Ladyland. Hendrix would never…
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos.19 & 23
Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano; Freiburger Barockorchester
Harmonia Mundi HMM 902334 (CD, 24/96). 2024. Martin Sauer, prod.; Julian Schwenkner, eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano; Freiburger Barockorchester
Harmonia Mundi HMM 902334 (CD, 24/96). 2024. Martin Sauer, prod.; Julian Schwenkner, eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
As an inveterate lover of period instruments with the timbral tang of authority, it's hard to imagine that any Mozart aficionado, even those who might initially turn to Khatia Buniatishvili's contemporaneous, modern-instrument recording of Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos.20 & 23 with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, will not develop a special…
Donald Vega: All Is Merry and Bright
Vega, piano; Clovis Nicolas, bass; Pete Van Nostrand, drums
Imagery Records and Anderson Audio (DXD 24/352.8 WAV file). 2024. Vega, Jim Anderson, Laura Vega, prods.; Jim Anderson, Ulrike Schwarz, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics *****
Vega, piano; Clovis Nicolas, bass; Pete Van Nostrand, drums
Imagery Records and Anderson Audio (DXD 24/352.8 WAV file). 2024. Vega, Jim Anderson, Laura Vega, prods.; Jim Anderson, Ulrike Schwarz, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics *****
It's easy to hear why performers of all stripes are drawn to Christmas music: The tunes are irresistible. The challenge lies in how every known Christmas tune has been played live and recorded umpteen times. Yet hope springs eternal and every artist who dives in thinks they can bring something new to these…
In last month's As We See It, I offered some reminiscences of my almost half-century of being involved in audio magazine publishing, as well as some thoughts on the Law of Diminishing Returns as it applied to the prices of hi-fi products. As I was compiling this issue's Records 2 Live 4, it struck me that my interest not just in audio but in recording live music started 10 years earlier, when my parents bought me a mono Grundig tape recorder for my birthday. I first used the Grundig to record the high school rock group in which I played bass guitar, then replaced it with a stereo Sony tape…
Elvis Costello: King of America & Other Realms
UMG 602488514378 (6 CDs). 2024. Costello and Henry "T Bone" Burnett, original album prod., Costello, Steve Berkowitz, reissue prods.; William Berry Jackson, David Dominguez, Larry Hirsch, Mark Linett, others, engs.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****
UMG 602488514378 (6 CDs). 2024. Costello and Henry "T Bone" Burnett, original album prod., Costello, Steve Berkowitz, reissue prods.; William Berry Jackson, David Dominguez, Larry Hirsch, Mark Linett, others, engs.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****
By the mid-1980s, Elvis Costello was in dire need of a change in musical direction. As he recounts in the extensive new liner notes, he was "playing in a band that suddenly sounded like four strangers." Seeking inspiration, he decided the path forward was to use his own name, Declan…
T+A R 2500 R Streaming Receiver Phono Module
In my review of the T+A R 2500 R receiver in the August 2024 issue, I covered many of its features and took as deep a dive as time and column inches allowed. Suffice to say, it's a very complex device, a near-complete system minus speakers (and a turntable/cartridge system, if you're into vinyl). It's a radio (FM and FM-HD), CD player, networked streamer-computer, DAC, analog preamplifier (including analog tone controls), class-AB power amplifier, and power supply, all in one relatively compact and mid-weight, well-finished metal chassis. It is…
It was October 1990 and Richard Lehnert, at that time Stereophile's music editor, buttonholed me in our office parking lot. He had an idea for a new feature in which, instead of recommending audio components, which we had been doing since the first edition of Recommended Components in 1963, we should do the same for music. "Rather than a selection of all-time (or year's) best recorded performances—which are common enough—or a list of audiophile reference recordings—common enough in the audiophile press, at any rate," he said, "this would be a list of stereo recordings that are both musically…
John Atkinson
Jeff Buckley: Mystery White Boy: Live '95-'96
Jeff Buckley (vocals, guitar), Michael Tighe (guitar), Mick Grondahl (bass), Matt Johnson (drums)
Columbia 4979722 (CD, 16/44.1 FLAC, Qobuz/Tidal). 2000. Mary Guibert, Michael Tighe, prods.
I was late to Jeff Buckley's music, not becoming aware of his enormous talent as a songwriter/guitarist/singer until long after his premature death in 1997. His album Grace was one of my 2007 Records to Die For, and soon after that I bought Mystery White Boy: Live '95-'96 . It took me a while to warm up to…