He used a wind-up Victrola sitting on a shelf directly in front of the cows, just below a framed reproduction of an Alpine landscape painting. He said the music and the mountain scene relaxed the cows, causing them to give better milk. Harold played the same Gustav Mahler symphony every day. I remember how quickly each disc ended, how I had to run over and change it, and how cross he got when I played the discs in the…
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I spent my childhood summers on the Reichert family farm near Turtle Lake, Wisconsin, where, inside the red 1880s barn, my uncle Harold played 78rpm records for his cows.
I had forgotten how adeptly the J2 tracked complex musical passages and how completely it recovered reverberation. On Correlations, the reverb tails on piano notes were perfect: mesmerizing, rich in tone, neither too long nor too short.
Carlos Cipa is a young (b. 1990), Munich-based, classically trained pianist, drummer, composer, and producer. Correlations (on 11 pianos) is his newest album. It might not be as musically deep or edgy as it pretends to be, but the exquisite textured tones and delicate reverb from its 11 radically different pianos was all the deep content I required.…
Osvaldo Golijov: Falling Out of Time
The Silkroad Ensemble
In a Circle Records ICR 017 (CD). 2020. Jeremy Flower, Jonny Gandelsman, prods.; Jody Elff, Kevin Killen, engs.
Performance *****
Sonics ****½
The Silkroad Ensemble
In a Circle Records ICR 017 (CD). 2020. Jeremy Flower, Jonny Gandelsman, prods.; Jody Elff, Kevin Killen, engs.
Performance *****
Sonics ****½
The Silkroad Ensemble represents a specific sort of intermingling. Founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and named for the ancient trading route that for centuries connected Asia, East Africa, and Southern Europe for commercial and cultural exchange, the ensemble seeks to promote global understanding through the blending of artistic traditions.
There may be no more powerful…
Dave Pietro: Hypersphere
Dave Pietro, saxophones, flute, compositions, arrangements; six others
ArtistShare ASO179 (CD, also available as download). 2020. Dave Pietro, prod.; Tyler McDiarmid, eng.
Performance ****
Sonics ****½
Dave Pietro, saxophones, flute, compositions, arrangements; six others
ArtistShare ASO179 (CD, also available as download). 2020. Dave Pietro, prod.; Tyler McDiarmid, eng.
Performance ****
Sonics ****½
Dave Pietro is an A-list reed player who works in the finest jazz orchestras (Maria Schneider, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Ryan Truesdell). He has released eight of his own albums since 1996. With the last two, New Road: Iowa Memoirs and Hypersphere, he has emerged as a leader of importance.
Both records feature trumpeter Alex Sipiagin, keyboardist…
Saunder Jurriaans: Beasts
Decca (16-bit/44.1 kHz streaming on Qobuz). 2020. Saunder Jurriaans, prod.; D. James Goodwin, eng.
Performance ****
Sonics ****
Decca (16-bit/44.1 kHz streaming on Qobuz). 2020. Saunder Jurriaans, prod.; D. James Goodwin, eng.
Performance ****
Sonics ****
While Saunder Jurriaans was writing his solo debut, he became a sought-after soundtrack composer with musical partner Danny Bensi. They helped create the grim, ethereal moods of Ozark, The OA, and Fear the Walking Dead. With Beasts, Jurriaans soundscapes his own story. The result is engrossing.
The album journeys from chaos into a greater understanding, with musical timbres as the storytelling language. The opening…
Since acquiring SME in late 2016, Ajay Shirke's Cadence Group has moved cautiously. First, it revamped and cleaned up the company's somewhat chaotic worldwide distribution. More recently, the new owners eliminated from the bottom of the line the SME Model 10 turntable, introduced in 2000.
The Model 10 was the first SME turntable to not use the company's familiar O-ring suspension, as well as the first to use the company's M10 tonearm, which was not available separately. The M10 was said to be a derivative of the tapered armtube 309 and, according to SME, a superior performer—though it…
I just wanted to hear how the 'table handled the big organ's low end and the recording's overall scale. It was room-filling—you can hear the empty hall—and the bottom end was well-controlled and muscular. Regarded on its own, the sound of the Synergy was "you are there" fun, though when I played the same record through my big rig, with the Anna D, the sound was simply WOW! But come on, man: We're talking about 10 times the cost of the very competent and fine SME player. I hope the Synergy becomes the "analog goodwill ambassador" to the well-off audiophile looking to get into vinyl minus the…
Sidebar: In Heavy Rotation
Bailen: Thrilled to Be Here
Fantasy (LP)
Milt Jackson: Ballads & Blues
Atlantic/Speakers Corner (LP)
Joe Henderson: The State of the Tenor, Vol. 2
Blue Note Tone Poet (LP)
Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks
Mobile Fidelity 1 Step (LP)
Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks
RSD Columbia (LP)
John Lee Hooker: The Country Blues of . . .
Riverside/ERC (LP)
Daniel Norgren: Wooh Dang
Superpuma (LP)
Dexter Gordon Quartet…
How to explain the power that trained operatic voices hold over many of us? For me, the pull began days after I was born, when acoustic 78s of tenor Enrico Caruso and coloratura sopranos Amelita Galli-Curci and Luisa Tetrazzini played in the background. There was something about the way the dramatic-to-the-core Caruso sang, as if his life depended on it, while the high-flying coloraturas skipped lightly through impossible strings of notes. It moved me like little else.
The magic of classical vocal artistry revolves around the ability to seduce with sound while conveying a wide variety of…
Warner's latest high-resolution 24/96 digital remasterings of Callas's commercial and live repertoire honor the intentions of the original recording engineers and showcase her at her astounding best. Sutherland's early-stereo analog LPs for London/Decca (footnote 2) are as prized for their depiction of air, space, and vocal proportion as for the singing itself. Perhaps the only limitation of these "Golden Age of analog" mono and stereo recordings was the need to compress dynamics between the softest and loudest passages to avoid oversaturation, needle skipping, and burying subtle detail…