Jason Victor Serinus

It's noon and a sunny 76º, and already people are setting up for the inaugural Florida Audio Expo at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Tampa Airport Westshore. No sooner do I walk into the Dynamic Sound Associates room than someone asks me if I can please hold three long and hefty Luminous Audio power cables. With those monsters hanging over one shoulder, I snap my first photo.

There are many ways to talk about the remarkable Symphonies Nos.1 & 4 • Jeux vénitiens of Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski (1913–1994). You could, for example, approach them as does Kimmo Korhonen, whose extremely detailed and well-thought-out liner notes for the recent Ondine SACD of these works from Hannu Lintu and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra examine the evolution of Lutoslawski's tonal language and explain that they basically represent the beginning (Symphony No.1, 1947), middle (Venetian Games, 1960–1961) and end (Symphony No.4, 1992) of his arc as a mature composer. Or you could simply close your eyes and discover how many fantastic places they take you to.

To celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the recent Women's March, we turn the spotlight on Symphonies Nos.1 & 4 of Florence Beatrice Price (1887–1953), the first African American woman to have her music performed by a major American orchestra. In doing so, I extend a big thank you to Naxos, whose invaluable American Classics series continues to record works by American composers both famous and relatively unknown.

By Day Three of four-day CES 2019, reality had set in for most of the few high-end audio exhibitors who set up shop in the Venetian: the curtain has closed on CES as "the place" for high-end audio product introductions and business transactions. Several of the smaller companies I spoke with were already done with waxing nostalgic on the glory days of CES—an era when there were so many distributors, dealers, and journalists clogging the hallways and rooms that some exhibitors had to either close up shop at the factory or recruit extra help to cater to everyone. After wiping tears from their eyes, they had decided to move on.