Jason Victor Serinus

Happily, extremely listenable and well-balanced sound from a 24/176.4 file of Brubeck's "Take Five," and a 16-bit file of a track that I think was titled "Camptino," from the Erik Truffaz Quartet featuring the wonder Rokia Traoré, was the hallmark of a large, air-walled space sponsored by multiple companies. Here, chatting was minimal, perhaps simply because the sound was so good. I really enjoyed how mellow the sax sounded, and how drums were rendered with truthfulness without becoming clattery.

Illinois dealer F1 chose the sonically challenged, glass-encased Nirvana Lounge, on the second floor of the Renaissance Schaumberg's Convention Center, to stage its $428,871 crate-décor system complete with an important premiere: the Dan D'Agostino Momentum HD preamplifier.

In the middle of AXPONA's annual pre-show industry reception, held Thursday evening in the huge Schaumburg Ballroom of the Schaumburg Hotel & Convention Center, Paul Miller (on the right in the photo above), Director of AVTech Media/AVTech Media Americas—which publishes Stereophile, AudioStream, InnerFidelity, AnalogPlanet, Sound & Vision, and the UK's Hi-Fi News & Record Review (amongst other properties)—unexpectedly took to the stage . . .

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.

The first and only time I heard a live performance of Mahler's five-movement Symphony No.7, from Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, I left Davies Symphony Hall confused. The bad press that the 70+ minute work has received for over a century, mainly for its innate ambiguity, convinced me that it was, at best, a problematic work—one that Mahler might have eventually revised had he lived long enough. But after listening to DSD128 files of Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra's new recording of the symphony for Channel Classics, released March 29 in SACD format, I've come to consider it a somewhat shy flower that puts on a brave face and remains in the shadows until a strong conductor coaxes it into the light and convinces it to share all of its bloom and fragrance.

Don't be fooled by Definitive Audio of Seattle's intentionally understated exterior. In my five years covering the annual four-hour Music Matters showcases, I have never heard such stellar sound from the store's six showrooms and head-fi listening area. In fact, four of the exhibits at Music Matters 14, held on Thursday March 7, together offered the finest sound I have ever experienced at any show or store event. And I'll swear by that statement.

Given its engrossing, frequently radiant score, unflinching look at its timely subject matter, and superb cast of singing actors, Pentatone's live hi-rez recording of the premiere of Mason Bates and Mark Campbell's opera, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, fully deserves the Grammy recently bestowed upon it by the Recording Academy.