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In my March 2018 column I reviewed two new cartridges from Kuzma Ltd. (footnote 1): the CAR-50 ($5895) and the CAR-60 ($12,995). Presumably, CAR is an abbreviation of cartridge, but for $12,995 you could buy a car you could climb into and drive home—so the CAR-60 had better be a damn great cartridge. The CAR-60's qualities of parts…

Miyajima Laboratory Madake Snakewood phono cartridge
In the December 2014 installment of this column, I reviewed Miyajima Laboratory's unusual Madake cartridge ($5895, footnote 3); later, I bought it. The Madake's cantilever is made of a particular strain of bamboo (madake in Japanese) said to grow only on…

Brick-and-mortar hi-fi dealerships need customers in their stores—now more than ever following pandemic closures. The hi-fi industry's long-term survival depends on bringing in new blood. New, music-loving customers might begin as casual listeners. In time, a few will advance to full-blown audiophilia; everyone has to start somewhere.

Why shouldn't their first experience…

If I hadn't told you, you wouldn't have known when I wrote this essay—and you still don't know where I was when I wrote it: my office? In an airplane 36,000 feet up? Similarly, I don't know where you'll be when you read it, or when: Maybe in early 2022 in your listening chair; maybe you'll find it in a box in an attic many years hence and read it then.

What I'm…

Ben LaMar Gay draws from experience, and plenty of it. He has dueted with the DuSable Bridge in downtown Chicago (check YouTube) and is a member of that city's fertile Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. He lived and worked in Brazil for three years, and last year was commissioned to compose a piece for New York City's Wet Ink Ensemble. His musical mind goes to many places, and…

Edward Simon is in the second echelon of jazz pianists. He is firmly established, widely respected, and not quite a star.

He was born in Venezuela but came to the United States at 16, 36 years ago. His impressive list of credits includes Greg Osby, Terence Blanchard, and the SFJAZZ Collective.

Solo Live is his 15th album as a leader, but his first unaccompanied and only his second live recording…

Any concerns that artistic shortcomings might have been the reason that Cecilia Bartoli held back release of this 2013 collection of concert arias and extended vocal scenas are dispelled immediately once you listen. It may be difficult to imagine Bartoli's light mezzo-soprano undertaking Beethoven's dramatic scena "Ah! perfido"…

In the subsequent months, he happily spent a good deal of time at home with his wife and their 14-year-old son. When his creativity needed an outlet, along came an offer from CBS to write and record the theme song and musical cues for a new comedy show, B Positive. And after the pandemic peaked, he told me, "I did some concerts, got a little gig-playing money…

The Altec A-7-500 offers a highly efficient, rather forward sound for use in large to very large listening rooms or for very-high-volume "Row A" listening in smaller rooms; sound is rather forward but smooth; relatively little "horn" coloration; drivers excellently blended; bass moderately deep (useful to around 50Hz in most rooms), very tight, well defined; highs smooth and rather soft, yielding most-natural high-end quality at high listening levels; stereo imaging fairly good but optimum listening area somewhat small; an…