Music and Recording Features

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Music and Recording Features
New Cantus CD from John Atkinson
Stereophile Staff  |  Jun 26, 2009  |  First Published: Dec 26, 2007  |  0 comments
Stereophile's seventh CD of Minnesotan male choir Cantus, called with delightful originality Cantus (CTS1207) and recorded at 88.2kHz with 24-bit resolution, is now available from our e-commerce page, for $16.95 plus S&H.
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Music and Recording FeaturesRabbit Holes
New rock music as an odd musical niche
Tom Fine  |  Jul 05, 2022  |  7 comments
My tastes coalesced around rock music, particularly the harder and faster kind, by the time I was in middle school. Earlier, they were oriented toward pop: The Beatles are my first and forever musical love.
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Music and Recording Features
New York Tenor Central
Ken Micallef  |  Oct 04, 2018  |  5 comments
Even as hypergentrification runs rampant, enriching financial opportunities for some and crushing small-business dreams for others, New York City remains ground zero for jazz and for the small clubs it thrives in. The New York Times may not cover jazz unless someone of the stature of Wynton Marsalis is on the bill, but the music moves ahead undeterred, taking up residence at such iconic venues as the Blue Note, Cornelia Street Café, Fat Cat, 55 Bar, Jazz Gallery, Mezzrow, Smalls, Smoke, the Village Vanguard, and Zinc Bar.
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Music and Recording Features
On The Road Again, A Year Later
Thomas Conrad  |  Nov 07, 2023  |  2 comments
Teatro Morlacchi at Umbria. All Photos by Tim Dickeson.

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.

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Music and Recording Features
On The Road Again: Three European Jazz Festivals
Thomas Conrad  |  Nov 10, 2022  |  0 comments
The first European jazz festival I ever attended was in 2006. It was the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy, one of the biggest. Tens of thousands of people overran the cobblestone streets and piazzas of Perugia's old town. The music began before noon and ended long after midnight. At the end of 10 days, I was delirious from joy and sleep deprivation.
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FeaturesMusic and Recording Features
One by One: the Cantus Recording Project
John Atkinson, Wes Phillips  |  Jan 09, 2002  |  0 comments
Just who were these guys?—Wes Phillips
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InterviewsMusic and Recording Features
Pat Metheny: From His Place
Ken Micallef  |  Jun 25, 2021  |  10 comments
When Pat Metheny was growing up in the small Missouri town of Lee's Summit, his family's home stood within can't-even-hear-yourself-shouting distance of the Missouri Pacific railroad. trains, tornadoes, freezing winters, hot summers, small-town isolation—all fed an imagination that (combined with plenty of practice) fed a legendary music career.
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InterviewsMusic and Recording Features
Peter Wolf: A Hard Drivin' Man
Robert Baird  |  May 03, 2016  |  5 comments
Don't get me wrong—it was a nice surprise. It's always good to find another member of the cult, someone else interested in music and sound, and proud to be called an audiophile. But . . . Peter Wolf?

"What's John Atkinson like?"

"Here's the $64,000 question: What's in your system?"

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Jason Victor SerinusMusic and Recording Features
Philip Glass Premiere from Third Coast Percussion
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Apr 05, 2019  |  10 comments
Philip Glass (b. 1937) may not quite be a household name in America, but he's surely as well-known as any living classical composer, and the repetitive minimalism that is the hallmark of his music has influenced everything from rock music to TV commercials. Still, after 5 decades of composing, it took a commission from Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion for Glass to write his first concerto for percussion ensemble, Perpetulum—"What took them so long to ask me?" Glass has said about the commission. TCP has just released the premiere recording of the 21:23 minute concerto on their new 2-CD set, Perpetulum (OM 0132), from Glass's own label, Orange Mountain Music. The recording, which was engineered in 24/96, is also available as a download with those specifications.
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Music and Recording FeaturesInterviews
Poem: Stereophile Cuts an LP
John Atkinson, Richard Lehnert, Denis Stevens  |  Sep 03, 1989  |  0 comments
Why had a high-end hi-fi magazine felt the need to produce a classical LP when the thrust of real record companies in 1989 is almost exclusively toward CD and cassette? Why did the magazine's editors think they had a better chance than most experienced professional engineers in making a record with audiophile sound quality? Were they guilty of hubris in thinking that the many years between them spent practicing the profession of critic would qualify them as record producers?
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Music and Recording Features
Project K622
John Atkinson  |  Jul 18, 2004  |  First Published: Aug 01, 2004  |  0 comments
The upbeat is the most magic moment in classical music making. Before the conductor brings down his baton for the downbeat, anything and everything are possible in the musical journey that is about to begin. And the upbeat to Mozart's sublime Clarinet Concerto that conductor Robert Bailey was about to give in London's Henry Wood Hall last November gave me an extra frisson—as producer of the recording sessions, I would have to pronounce instant judgment on everything I was about to hear.
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Music and Recording FeaturesRecords To Die For
R2D4 2022: Death-Defying Tunes
Stereophile Staff  |  Jan 18, 2022  |  7 comments
So, what's this all about? Most of you already know—after all, we've been doing it since 1991, and it's one of our most popular features. But if you're new to Stereophile, here it is: Originally, the light-hearted conceit was, these are the records you'd be willing to lay down your life for. (This foie gras is to die for!) But, let's be real: That ain't gonna happen, or so I hope.
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InterviewsMusic and Recording Features
Rachael and Vilray: Carrying a Torch
Tony Scherman  |  Mar 08, 2023  |  6 comments
As Vilray Bolles marched down Manhattan's Second Avenue on a rainy afternoon late in 2014, participating in a demonstration against police brutality, he slipped on the wet pavement, fell hard on his right hand, and broke his pinky. For a guitarist, a broken finger can be a major, if not catastrophic, setback. But the gods were smiling on Bolles. He was, in fact, a lapsed guitarist, having all but abandoned hopes of a musical career, and the universe was giving him a nudge, not just back into music but into a collaboration with Rachael Price, one of contemporary pop's great vocalists, who, when she isn't singing cabaret jazz with Bolles, fronts the headlining rock band Lake Street Dive.
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Music and Recording Features
Rarities and Reissues: Blue Note Records Turns 75
Robert Baird  |  Oct 08, 2014  |  1 comments
Fifty-four years after it was recorded, Hank Mobley's immortal Soul Station has become a tale of two LPs.

One, the original pressing (mono or stereo), is an artifact, an insanely valuable antique, the object of fevered jazz collectors the world over.

The other is a fresh vinyl reissue, cut from a high-resolution digital remastering of the original master tapes, that's meant to bring in younger listeners, or those interested enough in the music that they'll pay $19.95 for a new LP.

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Music and Recording Features
Ray Davies & The Kinks
John Swenson  |  Feb 07, 2017  |  First Published: May 01, 1997  |  14 comments
1996 was a banner year for Ray Davies—one of the most talented writers and conceptualists rock has ever produced. After more than 30 years with The Kinks, the group he has led off and on along with his younger brother Dave, Ray was enjoying a new career as a solo artist. His keen wit and storytelling ability enabled him to take his remarkable one-man play, 20th Century Man, to packed houses and critical acclaim all over the United States. The play, based loosely on his equally remarkable fictionalized autobiography, X-Ray, provided a unique insight into the forces that have shaped Ray Davies's long, prolific career as a rock songwriter.
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