Music and Recording Features

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FeaturesMusic and Recording Features
Duet: And Two to Carry Your Soul Away
Ida Levin, Wes Phillips, John Atkinson  |  Jun 18, 1998  | 
The Sessions: Wes Phillips
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FeaturesMusic and Recording FeaturesHistorical
40 Years of Stereophile: The 40 Essential Albums
Robert Baird, Richard Lehnert, Robert Levine  |  Nov 17, 2002  | 
And I used to think our annual "Records To Die For" issue was difficult. Whew! When it came down to choosing the 40 most influential rock/pop, jazz, and classical records of the past 40 years, during which this magazine has been the most honest and enjoyable source of high-end audio journalism, my initial list contained more than 200 choices. A painful paring-down process ensued, with input from every member of the Stereophile staff.
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FeaturesMusic and Recording Features
Against the Dying of the Light: the Second Cantus CD
John Atkinson, Wes Phillips  |  Dec 24, 2002  | 
Part 1: Wes Phillips on the CD's genesis
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FeaturesMusic and Recording Features
Bravo!: the 1998 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival CD
John Atkinson  |  Sep 15, 1999  | 
"There, that's where you should put the microphone—5" from the end of my bow."
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Music and Recording Features
Comfort and Joy: the making of Cantus' Christmas CDs
John Atkinson  |  Oct 23, 2005  |  First Published: Nov 23, 2005  | 
"I can't make out the words."
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Music and Recording Features
Deep River: the Cantus Spirituals Project
John Atkinson  |  Feb 29, 2004  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2004  | 
When Cantus's artistic coordinator (and Stereophile reader) Erick Lichte phoned me in the summer of 2000 about my recording this Minnesotan male-voice choir, it didn't occur to me that I was entering a long-term relationship. But just as sure as 16-bit digital is not sufficient for long-term musical satisfaction, my first Cantus CD led to a second, and now a third. (All available from this website). For Deep River, I traveled to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where the city has spent millions of dollars to transform the downtown high school into a gloriously warm-sounding, state-of-the-art performing arts center.
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FeaturesMusic and Recording Features
Encore: the 1997 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival CD
John Atkinson, Wes Phillips  |  Jan 01, 1998  | 
"To be natural," Oscar Wilde said, "is such a very difficult pose to keep up."
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FeaturesMusic and Recording Features
Festival! The Best of the 1995 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
John Atkinson, Wes Phillips  |  Jan 26, 1996  | 
The inspiration for this project came from Stereophile's Gretchen Grogan and Erich Vollmer of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Music Festivals are perhaps the healthiest aspect of classical music making, allowing ad hoc ensembles to chart the farthest reaches of the repertoire, as well as retracing the familiar ground of the great works. Why not, they thought, capture a representative selection of works performed at the 1995 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival? This would not only document some of the great performances to be heard, but also allow music lovers everywhere to participate in what has increasingly been recognized as one of the US's best summer music festivals.
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Music and Recording Features
Intermezzo: The Santa Barbara Sessions
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 04, 1997  |  First Published: Feb 04, 1991  | 
The justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men.—Glenn Gould
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Music and Recording Features
Live at Otto's: a New Stereophile Jazz CD
John Atkinson  |  Jun 26, 2009  | 
Released in July, Live at Otto's Shrunken Head (STPH020-2) is the latest Stereophile CD from reviewer Bob Reina's jazz quartet, Attention Screen. Unlike the group's first CD, Live at Merkin Hall (STPH018-2, released in 2007), which was recorded with multiple microphones, I captured the eight improvisations on Live at Otto's using a single pair of mikes.
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Music and Recording Features
Molto Molto—a New Stereophile Album from Sasha Matson
John Atkinson  |  May 01, 2023  | 
We started issuing recordings on the Stereophile label at the end of the 1980s, both to make available some of test tracks that we were using in our reviews and to enable readers to have access to recordings where the provenance was fully documented. That way the "Circle of Confusion" that Bob Katz discussed on the Stereophile website in 2017, where the sound quality of an audio component couldn't be judged using a recording with unknown sound quality potential, could be avoided. As Bob wrote, "How can any reviewer make a judgment about a transducer without knowing what a recording is supposed to sound like?"
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FeaturesMusic and Recording Features
Serenade: the 1996 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival CD
Eric Bromberger, John Atkinson, Wes Phillips  |  Jan 12, 1997  | 
A musical highlight for us at Stereophile in 1995 was the opportunity to record several concerts at the world-famous Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. The result was a Stereophile CD, Festival (STPH007-2), which features the original chamber version of Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, Darius Milhaud's jazz-inspired La création du monde, and the premiere recording of the 1995 Festival commission, Tomiko Kohjiba's The Transmigration of the Soul (see Stereophile, January 1996, Vol.19 No.1, p.132). We were pleased, therefore, to be asked back by the Festival in 1996. Once again we have produced a CD of live recordings, Serenade (STPH009-2), which features chamber works by Mozart, Brahms, and Dvorák.
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ReferenceFeaturesMusic and Recording Features
Stereophile Test CD 3
John Atkinson  |  Mar 07, 1995  | 
Back in the spring of 1990, Stereophile introduced its first Test CD, featuring a mixture of test signals and musical tracks recorded by the magazine's editors and writers. Even as we were working on that first disc, however, we had plans to produce a second disc which would expand on the usefulness of the first and feature a more varied selection of music. The result was our Test CD 2, released in May 1992.
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Music and Recording Features
Tannhäuser: Wagner's "problem" opera
Richard Lehnert  |  Jul 15, 1990  | 
When I suggested to editor John Atkinson that the subject of my first "Building A Library" be Wagner's Tannhäuser, furrows ploughed his boyish brow. "Why such minor Wagner? Why not the Ring?"
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Music and Recording Features
A Fine Art: The Mercury Living Presence Recordings
Robert Baird  |  Jul 10, 2012  | 
It is perhaps the most cherished tale from hi-fi's primordial past: In 1951—when music was first being recorded on magnetic tape, when the use of much-improved microphones became a mix of science and art, and when Stereophile's founder, J. Gordon Holt, was still a little nipper, years away from his first martini (though I wouldn't swear to that)—the team of Robert (Bob) and Wilma Cozart Fine began to build a legendary catalog of recordings of classical music. It eventually included the work of conductors Rafael Kubelik, Antal Doráti, and Frederick Fennell; the Chicago and Minneapolis symphony orchestras; the pianists Byron Janis and Gina Bachauer; and the cellists Mstislav Rostropovich and János Starker—all released with often wildly colorful covers under the still-evocative title of Mercury Living Presence.
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